ABSTRACT
The relation of Americans to the classical epic tradition goes something like the habitual climax of Indiana Jones or Lara Croft, Tomb Raider films. The United States is a nation without a national epic, in the sense of a single, widely acknowledged, long narrative poem of exemplary deeds that has been canonized both by scholars and by the common folk as distinctly representative of the core character and values of their nation. The deeds themselves, which consist of a series of personalized duels between the enemy kings and the Jewish heroes, provide the necessary close-up for the endeavour to acquire significance. American ideology, however, true to its Puritan origins, at the time the so-called Hartfort or Connecticut wits like Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow attempt their poems, is by the Miltonic one. Dwight adds to that his invocation of the Aristotelian impulse to give entire 'Unity to the Action' in making the Cananite hero, Jabin, the focus of his epic.
