Epic poetry

An epic poem is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily involving a time beyond living memory in which occurred the extraordinary doings of the extraordinary men and women who, in dealings with the gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants, the poet and their audience, to understand themselves as a people or nation.[1]

For other uses of "epic", see Epic (disambiguation).

Tablet containing a fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh
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Another type of epic poetry is epyllion (plural: epyllia), is a brief narrative poem with a romantic or mythological theme. The term, which means "little epic," came into use in the nineteenth century. It refers primarily to the erudite, shorter hexameter poems of the Hellenistic period and the similar works composed at Rome from the age of the neoterics; to a lesser degree, the term includes some poems of the English Renaissance, particularly those influenced by Ovid.[2] The most famous example of classical epyllion is perhaps Catullus 64.

Etymology

The English word epic comes from the Latin epicus, which itself comes from the Ancient Greek adjective ἐπικός (epikos), from ἔπος (epos),[3] "word, story, poem."[4]

Overview
The first edition (1835) of the Finnish national epic poetry Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot

Originating before the invention of writing, primary epics were composed by bards who used complex rhetorical and metrical schemes by which they could memorize the epic as received in tradition and add to the epic in their performances. Hence aside from writers like Dante, Camões, and Milton, Apollonius of Rhodes in his Argonautica and Virgil in Aeneid adopted and adapted Homer's style and subject matter, but used devices available only to those who write, and in their works Nonnus' Dionysiaca and Tulsidas' Sri Ramacharit Manas also used stylistic elements typical of epics.

The oldest epic recognized is the Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2500–1300 BCE), which was recorded in ancient Sumer during the Neo-Sumerian Empire. The poem details the exploits of Gilgamesh, the king of Uruk. Although recognized as a historical figure, Gilgamesh, as represented in the epic, is a largely legendary or mythical figure.[5]

The longest epic written is the ancient Indian Mahabharata (c. 3rd century BC—3rd century AD),[6] which consists of 100,000 ślokas or over 200,000 verse lines (each shloka is a couplet), as well as long prose passages, so that at ~1.8 million words it is roughly twice the length of Shahnameh, four times the length of the Rāmāyaṇa, and roughly ten times the length of the Iliad and the Odyssey combined.[7][8][9].

Famous examples of epic poetry include the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, the ancient Indian Mahabharata and Rāmāyaṇa, the Tamil Silappatikaram, the Persian Shahnameh, the Ancient Greek Odyssey and Iliad, Virgil's Aeneid, the Old English Beowulf, Dante's Divine Comedy, the Finnish Kalevala, the Estonian Kalevipoeg, the German Nibelungenlied, the French Song of Roland, the Spanish Cantar de mio Cid, the Portuguese Os Lusíadas, the Armenian Daredevils of Sassoun, and John Milton's Paradise Lost. Epic poems of the modern era include Derek Walcott’s Omeros and Adam Mickiewicz's Pan Tadeusz. Paterson by William Carlos Williams published in five volumes from 1946 to 1958, was inspired in part by another modern epic, The Cantos by Ezra Pound.[10]

Oral epics

The first epics were products of preliterate societies and oral history poetic traditions. Oral tradition was used alongside written scriptures to communicate and facilitate the spread of culture.[11] In these traditions, poetry is transmitted to the audience and from performer to performer by purely oral means. Early twentieth-century study of living oral epic traditions in the Balkans by Milman Parry and Albert Lord demonstrated the paratactic model used for composing these poems. What they demonstrated was that oral epics tend to be constructed in short episodes, each of equal status, interest and importance. This facilitates memorization, as the poet is recalling each episode in turn and using the completed episodes to recreate the entire epic as he performs it. Parry and Lord also contend that the most likely source for written texts of the epics of Homer was dictation from an oral performance.

Milman Parry and Albert Lord have argued that the Homeric epics, the earliest works of Western literature, were fundamentally an oral poetic form. These works form the basis of the epic genre in Western literature. Nearly all of Western epic (including Virgil's Aeneid and Dante's Divine Comedy) self-consciously presents itself as a continuation of the tradition begun by these poems. Classical epic poetry employs a meter called dactylic hexameter and recounts a journey, either physical (as typified by Odysseus in the Odyssey) or mental (as typified by Achilles in the Iliad) or both. Epics also tend to highlight cultural norms and to define or call into question cultural values, particularly as they pertain to heroism.

Composition and conventions

In his work Poetics, Aristotle defines an epic as one of the forms of poetry, contrasted with lyric poetry and with drama in the form of tragedy and comedy.[12]

In A Handbook to Literature (1999), Harmon and Holman define an epic:

Epic: a long narrative poem in elevated style presenting characters of high position in adventures forming an organic whole through their relation to a central heroic figure and through their development of episodes important to the history of a nation or race. (Harmon and Holman)[13]

An attempt to delineate ten main characteristics of an epic:[13]

  1. Begins in medias res.
  2. The setting is vast, covering many nations, the world or the universe.
  3. Begins with an invocation to a muse (epic invocation).
  4. Begins with a statement of the theme.
  5. Includes the use of epithets.
  6. Contains long lists, called an epic catalogue.
  7. Features long and formal speeches.
  8. Shows divine intervention in human affairs.
  9. Features heroes that embody the values of the civilization.
  10. Often features the tragic hero's descent into the underworld or hell.

The hero generally participates in a cyclical journey or quest, faces adversaries that try to defeat him in his journey and returns home significantly transformed by his journey. The epic hero illustrates traits, performs deeds, and exemplifies certain morals that are valued by the society the epic originates from. Many epic heroes are recurring characters in the legends of their native cultures.

Conventions of epics:

  1. Proposition: Opens by stating the theme or cause of the epic. This may take the form of a purpose (as in Milton, who proposed "to justify the ways of God to men"); of a question (as in the Iliad, which Homer initiates by asking a Muse to sing of Achilles' anger); or of a situation (as in the Song of Roland, with Charlemagne in Spain).
  2. Invocation: Writer invokes a Muse, one of the nine daughters of Zeus. The poet prays to the Muses to provide him with divine inspiration to tell the story of a great hero.[14] (This convention is restricted to cultures influenced by European Classical culture. The Epic of Gilgamesh, for example, or the Bhagavata Purana do not contain this element.)
  3. In medias res: narrative opens "in the middle of things", with the hero at his lowest point. Usually flashbacks show earlier portions of the story.
  4. Enumeratio: Catalogues and genealogies are given. These long lists of objects, places, and people place the finite action of the epic within a broader, universal context. Often, the poet is also paying homage to the ancestors of audience members.
  5. Epithet: Heavy use of repetition or stock phrases: e.g., Homer's "rosy-fingered dawn" and "wine-dark sea."

Form

Many verse forms have been used in epic poems through the ages, but each language's literature typically gravitates to one form, or at least to a very limited set. Ancient Sumerian epic poems did not use any kind of poetic meter and lines did not have consistent lengths;[15] instead, Sumerian poems derived their rhythm solely through constant repetition, with subtle variations between lines.[15] Indo-European epic poetry, by contrast, usually places strong emphasis on the importance of line consistency and poetic meter.[15] Ancient Greek and Latin poems were written in dactylic hexameter.[16] Old English, German and Norse poems were written in alliterative verse,[17] usually without rhyme. Italian, Spanish and Portuguese long poems were usually written in terza rima [18] or especially ottava rima.[19] From the 14th century English epic poems were written in heroic couplets,[20] and rhyme royal,[21] though in the 16th century the Spenserian stanza[22] and blank verse[23] were also introduced. The French alexandrine is currently the heroic line in French literature, though in earlier periods the decasyllable took precedence. In Polish literature, couplets of Polish alexandrines (syllabic lines of 7+6 syllables) prevail.[24] In Russian, iambic tetrameter verse is the most popular.[25] In Serbian poetry, the decasyllable is the only form employed.[26][27]

See also

References
  1. Michael Meyer, The Bedford Introduction to Literature (Bedford: St. Martin's, 2005), 2128. ISBN 0-312-41242-8.
  2. "Epyllion". www.britannica.com. Retrieved 21 February 2019.
  3. "epic". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
  4. Epic Online Etymology Dictionary
  5. Lawall, Sarah N.; Mack, Maynard, eds. (1999). Norton Anthology of World Masterpieces: The Western Tradition. 1 (7 ed.). New York: W.W. Norton. pp. 10–11. ISBN 978-0-393-97289-4.
  6. Austin, p. 21.
  7. James G. Lochtefeld (2002). The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Hinduism: A-M. The Rosen Publishing Group. p. 399. ISBN 978-0-8239-3179-8.
  8. T.R.S. Sharma; June Gaur; Sahitya Akademi (2000). Ancient Indian Literature: An Anthology. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. p. 137. ISBN 978-81-260-0794-3.
  9. Spodek, Howard. Richard Mason. The World's History. Pearson Education: 2006, New Jersey. 224, ISBN 0-13-177318-6
  10. "Herbert Leibowitz on William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound: Episodes from a sixty-year friendship | Library of America". www.loa.org. Retrieved 12 October 2020.
  11. Jack Goody (1987). The Interface Between the Written and the Oral. Cambridge University Press. pp. 110–121. ISBN 978-0-521-33794-6.
  12. Aristotle: Poetics, translated with an introduction and notes by M. Heath, (Penguin) London 1996
  13. Taken from William Harmon and C. Hugh Holman, A Handbook to Literature, 8th ed., Prentice Hall, 1999.
  14. Battles, Paul (2014). "Toward a Theory of Old English Poetic Genres: Epic, Elegy, Wisdom Poetry, and the "Traditional Opening"". Studies in Philosophy. 111, 1: 1–34. doi:10.1353/sip.2014.0001. S2CID 161613381.
  15. Kramer, Samuel Noah (1963), The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character, Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press, pp. 184–185, ISBN 978-0-226-45238-8
  16. "Hexameter | poetry". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  17. "Alliterative verse | literature". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  18. "Terza rima | poetic form". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  19. "Ottava rima | poetic form". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  20. "Heroic couplet | poetry". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  21. "Rhyme royal | poetic form". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  22. "Spenserian stanza | poetic form". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  23. "Blank verse | poetic form". Encyclopedia Britannica.
  24. See: Trzynastozgłoskowiec, [in:] Wiktor Jarosław Darasz, Mały przewodnik po wierszu polskim, Kraków 2003 (in Polish).
  25. [Alexandra Smith, Montaging Pushkin: Pushkin and Visions of Modernity in Russian Twentieth Century Poetry, p. 184.]
  26. Meyer, David (27 November 2013). Early Tahitian Poetics. Walter de Gruyter. ISBN 9781614513759 – via Google Books.
  27. "The Spirit of the Serb – R. W. Seton-Watson 1915 « Britić".

Bibliography
  • Jan de Vries: Heroic Song and Heroic Legend ISBN 0-405-10566-5.
  • Hashmi, Alamgir (2011). "Eponymous Écriture and the Poetics of Reading a Transnational Epic". Dublin Quarterly, 15.
  • Frye, Northrop (2015) [1957]. Anatomy of Criticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-1-4008-6690-8.
  • Cornel Heinsdorff: Christus, Nikodemus und die Samaritanerin bei Juvencus. Mit einem Anhang zur lateinischen Evangelienvorlage, Untersuchungen zur antiken Literatur und Geschichte 67, Berlin/New York 2003, ISBN 3-11-017851-6.
  • Jansen, Jan and J Henk M.J. Maier, eds. 2004. Epic Adventures: Heroic Narrative in the Oral Performance Traditions of Four Continents (Literatur: Forschung und Wissenschaft, 3.) LIT Verlag.
  • Parrander, Patrick (1980). "Science Fiction as Epic". Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching. London: Methuen. pp. 88–105. ISBN 9780416714005.
  • Tillyard, E.M.W. (1966) [1954]. The English Epic and Its Background. New York: Oxford UP.
  • Wilkie, Brian (1965). Romantic Poets and Epic Tradition. University of Wisconsin Press.
Library resources about
Epic poetry

Media related to Epic poems at Wikimedia Commons

  • "The Epic", BBC Radio 4 discussion with John Carey, Karen Edwards and Oliver Taplin (In Our Time, Feb. 3, 2003)
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