epic

epic, a poem that celebrates in the form of a continuous narrative the achievements of one or more heroic personages of history or tradition. Among the great epics of the world may be mentioned The Iliad, The Odyssey, and The Aeneid (see Virgil) of classical, and the Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana of Hindu literature; the Chanson de Roland (see Roland and chansons de geste); The Cid; Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato; Ariosto's Orlando Furioso; Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered; and Camoëns's Lusiads.

In English literature, the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf is perhaps the only genuine epic, if an epic is defined as a long poem of a heroic age, based on anonymous lays and being impersonal and objective in its narrative.

Of ‘literary epics’, Spenser's The Faerie Queene and Milton's Paradise Lost are most famous. There was much speculation among critics in the 17th cent. on the theory of epic poetry, and several attempts were made to write an epic in English comparable to The Iliad. (Famous examples, both poor and unfinished, are Cowley's Davideis and D'Avenant's Gondibert.) Wordsworth's Prelude has been termed an ‘epic of the mind’, and Byron's Don Juan ranks as epic poetry. Some critics have claimed the same rank for Browning's The Ring and the Book; it is perhaps more accurately classed as a ‘novel in verse’.