What is Epic?

The epic is one of the oldest of the poetic forms. It is a long narrative poem, majestic both in theme and style, dealing with legendary or historical events of national or universal significance. Epic poems are not merely entertaining stories of legendary or historical heroes; they summarized and express the nature or ideals of an entire nation in a significant or a crucial period of its history.

Examples include the ancient Greek epics by the poet Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey.

Generally a distinction between epic verses is classified either as folk or as literary epics. Folk or popular or primary epics are believed to have developed from the orally transmitted folk poetry of tribal bards or other authors; they were eventually transcribed by anonymous poets. Well known examples of the folk epic are the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf (8th century), the German ‘Song of the Nibelungs’ (13th century) and the Indian epic the Mahabharata (400 b c) and the Ramayana (300 bc). The story material appearing in folk epics is usually based on legends or events that occurred a long time before the epic itself appeared.

Literary or art or secondary epics are the creation of known poets who consciously employ a long-established form. Like folk epics, literary epics deal with the traditions, mythical or historical of a nation. The Iliad and the Odyssey are regarded as the oldest literary epics.

Epics typically share a wide variety of characteristics: (1) the protagonist as a hero of great stature and significance with the two traditional virtues of bravery and wisdom; (2) the setting is on a grand and vast scale, often encompassing the known world at the time of the epic’s composition; (3) the action requires noble, fantastic, and even superhuman actions; (4) supernatural entities usually involve themselves in the action and in  the affairs of the hero, who often must descend into some kind of underworld before he can claim victory; (5) the entire epic is written in an elevated style designed to complement and heighten the already mythic proportions of the characters and their actions.

The great literary epics of postclassical Europe include the Italian Orlando Furioso by Ariosto, as well as The Faerie Queene and Paradise Lost by Milton. In the 19th century, the epic assumed various forms. In the lengthy and much revised autobiographical poem The Prelude (1850), the English poet William Wordsworth used the events of his life to explore the power of the human imagination. With Don Juan the English poet Lord Byron revived the ottava rima; the seriocomic epics of the Italian Renaissance (14th century to 17th century), using a breezy style that incorporated social commentary into the poem. Song of Myself by the American poet Walt Whitman is also regarded as a brief epic, the first-person narrator of which identifies himself a common American as well as with all of nature and humanity.

Twentieth-century English epics include The Dynasts (1903-1908), a long verse-drama by the poet Thomas Hardy. In the United States, such 20th century poets as Hart Crane (The Bridge, 1930), T.S. Eliot (Four Quartets, 1943), Ezra Pound (The Canots, 1930-1979), William Carlos Williams (Paterson, 1946-1958), and James Merrill (The changing Light at Sandover, 1976-1982) have differently attempted to provide the nation with a national epic, though the typical ‘conventions’ of the epic have almost faded away.

Published on 23 Jan. 2014 by Kedar Nath Sharma