Epic Poetry

[Proust71]

I am quite ambiguous as to what occurred with the cessation of epic poetry. Why has it not lived on like its literary counterparts? Where is the American epic poem that can one can say, "Oh, look, this rivals, if not is nonpareil, to Dante, Milton, or Virgil"? Indeed I wonder, and indeed, I am further befuddled. Can anyone enlighten me?

[JBI]

The last true Epic in English has to be the Prelude. Nothing else really took the same way. One can even argue that Milton's Paradise Lost was the last true epic. Still, nothing in the past Dante's Comedia seems to have had the same epic influence in the west as Dante, Beowulf, Virgil, Homer, el Cid, etc.

As a form, the epic seems to have died with the death of the oral tradition in the medieval times, and ironically, the publication of Dante, which set the grounds for vernacular language literature amongst the educated elite. Because of this, the epic seems to have died in favor of Prose, and in favor of theatre, and eventually in favor of novels. Verse itself has been put to a more lyric purpose in our time period.

There are American epics, Hiawatha, Evangeline by Longfellow, the infamous epic on Daniel Boone (I think it's called the Mountain Muse or something silly like that, it never took, and was a completely flop), Leaves of Grass to some extent is epic, though not really, the Wasteland, etc. None of these are true epics though.

True epics no longer exist since we no longer have need of them.

[Proust71]

I find their archaic characteristics rivoting. How reproachful we have to disregard them nowadays.

[blazeofglory]

Today, the world of the epic is gone, and hardly anyone reads it except for the academics. Not that it lost its shine and sheen, it still does have them. Yet people have a choice and sees finds arrays of the means of entertainment today with a massive range.

Yes I still love the Mahabharata, perhaps the greatest epic ever written, and it is matchless and marvelous.

[JBI]

Homer was the first cult figure of literature. And seems to be the most enduring one, besides perhaps Shakespeare. There just isn't room for an epic in these days where literature is a secondary form of communication.

[Petrarch's Love]

My, this thread comes off as a bit depressing. It also sounds a lot like people in the early 16th century who went around lamenting that the days of the great epic tales were dead and gone (they had yet to see Tasso, Ariosto, Spenser, Milton etc.). While, I'll agree that this is a more valid complaint in many ways in the early 21st century (certainly it's true, that Milton more or less marks the end of the classically imitative English poetic epic), I can't really fully agree with this statement:

True epics no longer exist since we no longer have need of them.

People are always going to have need of epic stories. They crave having common tales to tell and refer to, heroes to look up to, and some sort of larger narrative that celebrates the virtues and beliefs of their age. No, you're not going to find an exact replica of classical epic today, nor should you want to. Clearly a story that starts out with women as slaves and objects to pick a fight over, or one that celebrates the deeds of Christian crusaders in the Middle East are neither one of them suitable to the sort of culture I think most of us would like to see emerging at the start of this new millenium. Epics tied too closely and explicitly to specific nationalities are also going to be more difficult to pull off in an increasingly global world. However, I think there's still very much a place for the epic form in today's society.

I'll agree that unfortunately poetry in general, both epic and otherwise, is not really the it thing in our times. Prose reigns supreme right now. Who knows maybe poetry will make a comeback one of these days, but that's hard to say now. I disagree, however that epic themes have died out entirely. I would argue that the clearest inheritors of the epic tradition are fantasy and science fiction books, which are often quite old fashioned, either literally in that they are set in a mythical epic past, or in terms of the way they concentrate on the deeds of the hero, the workings of higher powers etc. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings is, of course, the most obvious, given his direct ties to earlier epic forms, but I would say that many fantasy novels and also, perhaps more importantly given their tremendous cultural impact, movies like Star Wars, etc. are carrying on this tradition. In fact, film is interesting to me because it in some ways has the potential to return to a more oral based story telling tradition. I think it will be exciting to see what sort of new themes get an epic style treatment in the coming years.

[Petrarch's Love]

As a form, the epic seems to have died with the death of the oral tradition in the medieval times, and ironically, the publication of Dante, which set the grounds for vernacular language literature amongst the educated elite. Because of this, the epic seems to have died in favor of Prose, and in favor of theatre, and eventually in favor of novels. Verse itself has been put to a more lyric purpose in our time period.

I've also got to disagree with this just in terms of your timeline. You can't possibly claim that poetry and the oral tradition died in the middle ages shortly after the publication of Dante. The period following Dante in the Renaissance was a golden age for poetry in Europe. To ignore it would be to ignore the likes of Petrarch, Ariosto and many others in Italy; the Pleiade in France; Chaucer Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton and many more in England. I think you have to move the rise of prose as the dominant form to at least the later 17th or early 18th century.

[JBI]

Poetry yes, but not epic poetry. You have Boccaccio shooting out the Decameron, you have the Arabian Nights earning popularity, you have the sonnet form kicking off, you have the Nuremberg scene down in Germany, with a strong emphasis on lyric, you have Chaucer getting ready in England, but who is writing epics in Vernacular? Who is writing Vernacular anyway? None of the medieval Latin epics really took.

Latin was the mark of the educated. No one wrote and read in Vernacular, essentially (with the exception of a few medieval romances, and the troubadour tradition which was more oral than written anyway), until really Dante.

After Dante you have Chaucer, then an influx of Italian literature around the world, entering England by means of translations, and direct copies. Lyric takes the stage completely after Dante, with the exception of narrative poetry in Boccaccio and Chaucer, though they are not, as pointed out writing epic.

The renaissance seems to me very prose and theatre driven. Name one major English verse writer from Chaucer until Spenser. Prose began to rise with the focus going towards humanism, and breaking away from medieval church influence. Prose certainly was at a low ebb before Dante, especially in Vernacular, and seems to shoot up right after him, and the bringing of Greek texts from Byzantium.

[mortalterror]

The Epic does not end after Milton. There are the Ossian poems published by MacPherson in 1765. William Blake writes Milton in 1810. John Keats writes Endymion and Hyperion at the beginning of the nineteenth century. There's Lord Byron's Don Juan, then the Kalevala which doesn't get written down until 1835. William Morris wrote The Earthly Paradise in the 1860s, and Sigurd the Volsung in 1870. James Joyce tries to parallel Homer's Odyssey in the structure and action of Ulysses in 1922. Currently, there are new sci-fi epic poems like Aniara, and Derek Walcott attempts to update the epic to modern times with his Omeros.

[Petrarch's Love]

Poetry yes, but not epic poetry. You have Boccaccio shooting out the Decameron, you have the Arabian Nights earning popularity, you have the sonnet form kicking off, you have the Nuremberg scene down in Germany, with a strong emphasis on lyric, you have Chaucer getting ready in England, but who is writing epics in Vernacular? Who is writing Vernacular anyway? None of the medieval Latin epics really took.

The Renaissance was when literature in the vernacular first really took off. It was also a great period for epic production. Due to their length there have always been very few quality epics produced in any period. The Renaissance saw the production of possibly a few more than its fair share. Among the poetic epics and epic/romances produced in the Renaissance:

Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata
Boiardo's Orlando Innamorata
Ariosto's Orlando Furioso
Camoes' Os Luciadas
Spenser's Faerie Queene
Milton's Paradise Lost

As you may know, the Renaissance is so called because the term means "re-birth," referring to the profound interest in the re-birth of the classics. Virgil and the Aeneid were absolutely central to this renewed interest in classical texts, and there were innumerable numbers of Virgilian imitators and not an inconsiderable number of those who either did or attempted to write epic poem to outdo the Aeneid. Those listed above were the most successful, but there were a plethora of attempts to write epic poetry or epic style romance. This is partly evident in that it inspired Cervantes' Don Quixote (a good place to go for considering the transition between epic and novel).

After Dante you have Chaucer, then an influx of Italian literature around the world, entering England by means of translations, and direct copies. Lyric takes the stage completely after Dante, with the exception of narrative poetry in Boccaccio and Chaucer, though they are not, as pointed out writing epic.

The renaissance seems to me very prose and theatre driven. Name one major English verse writer from Chaucer until Spenser. Prose began to rise with the focus going towards humanism, and breaking away from medieval church influence. Prose certainly was at a low ebb before Dante, especially in Vernacular, and seems to shoot up right after him, and the bringing of Greek texts from Byzantium.

Perhaps we're talking a bit at cross purposes here because if you're talking about English literature then what most call the Renaissance period begins in the early 16th century (usually the Petrarchan sonnets of Wyatt and Surrey are used as a rough mark of the start of the period) and really refers to the literature produced during the reigns of Elizabeth I and James I across the latter half of the 16th and the 17th century. Milton is then considered to be the author who marks the end of the English Renaissance period. If you have the 15th century in mind, then you're right that it was a period of very little literary production of any kind in England (though there are the great Arthurian long poems, the Alliterative Morte Arthur, and Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur). However, the English Renaissance, starting in the 16th century, is a period of astonishing poetic production and, indeed, produced very little in the way of enduring prose fiction. Certainly there are some excellent sermons, essays and other prose works (mostly non fiction) that emerge from the period, but these aren't the stand out literary works from the time. In terms of poets, you have Wyatt, Sidney, Marlowe, Spenser, Shakespeare, Herbert, Donne (indeed, all the metaphysical poets) and many others. Many centuries would be happy to have claimed the production of only one of these.

I'm a bit baffled by your desire to claim that theater is distinct from poetry during this time, since all plays were poetry. Indeed, that's one of the marks of the intense interest in poetry during the period. To say that Shakespeare doesn't count as a poet would be an absurd claim. Perhaps you are just trying to say that many poets were employed in writing for the theatre as opposed to writing epic? Many poets throughout the ages haven't been up to writing epic. Certainly I can't see how the verse drama of the Renaissance would indicate a trend toward prose.

[JBI]

Faery Queen isn't a true epic. First of all it didn't take, second of all, it was never finished (or even close to finished).

There have been epics written since Milton, of course, but none of them are true epics. True epics require in them the ability to speak of the whole culture and situation of a time period.

Homer encompassed the tradition and culture in Greek times by focusing his epics on traditional stories with a strong focus on Arete, the Greek ideal.

Virgil focuses on the Roman ideal, maturing the plot to suit the roman perception of Arete, including compassion, mercy, love, teamwork, and dedication. You don't see that in Homer, and it is also of note to mention the ending, which has drawn many critics, as to why Virgil makes Aeneas kill Turnus, who is begging on his knees.

Beowulf encompases the story of the decaying Geat way of life, as an influx of foreign influence enters, and Christianity mixes into a barbaric land. Beowulf seems to encompas the hopes and dreams of his nation, yet, ultimately, fails to live long enough to ensure the endurance of the Geat people.

The Song of Roland seems to reflect the mentality of the Franks. This story is famous for its early perception of chivalric honor, and its protagonist's reluctance to blow his horn, bringing about his tragic, yet heroic death. This shows us the mentality, and perception of Frankish Arete.

I am less familiar with the Poem of the Cid, but it can be seen to embody the Spanish ideal of honor, custom, and value, as do all true regional epics.

Dante seems to be the last one in this line of West-European epics. His journeys reflect the influences of Chivalric rommance, mixed in with a strong religious temperament (which was higher than ever at this point), and also reflects the values of Christian morality, and Christian desires.

I purposely left out the Nieblungenlied because I am less familiar with it than other epics, and because it seems to me to be minor in comparison, it being derived heavily from prior works. There are several other Scandanavian epics (including a famous Finnish one which I have never completed) but none seem to me to have the influence of these.

Either way, after Dante no work seems to come even close to achieving this sort of cult status. In addition, please take Milton off the list of Renaissance English writers, it is embarrassing to your intelligence.

The epic mode as it was originally intended seems to end with Dante. Milton, Wordsworth, Keats all try to create an epic, but none of them took. None of them had the same culture importance as the others.

[Petrarch's Love]

Faery Queen isn't a true epic. First of all it didn't take, second of all, it was never finished (or even close to finished).

I'll agree that it would be possible to argue about the generic category of the Faerie Queene, though not really for the reasons you mention. Not being finished doesn't mean it couldn't still be considered an epic work. I'm not sure exactly what you mean about it didn't take. It was a highly influential poem at the time and has had a great deal of influence on subsequent poets and writers. However, one could certainly say that FQ belongs to the category of epic style romance, as opposed to Virgilian epic. Many people in more general discussions tend to lump both epic and romance under the single umbrella of "Epic," and I wasn't sure how precise we were being in our terms in this discussion, especially since you mentioned the Prelude as a possible epic, which certainly has much less in common with traditional epic than the Faerie Queene.

The epic mode as it was originally intended seems to end with Dante. Milton, Wordsworth, Keats all try to create an epic, but none of them took. None of them had the same culture importance as the others.

I omit quoting your list of epics, but I have indeed read all those you mention as well as several others in the epic family, including many of the Northern sagas you allude to and so on (just so we know we're on the same page ). I don't think I can really agree that Milton's cultural impact is significantly less than Dante's. Paradise Lost, like the Divina Commedia, blends elements of both religious concerns and classical epic, making it similarly deeply relevant to the Christian culture of the times and afterward. It has had an enormous impact on both English literature and cuture, and it's still considered significant enough to be frequently taught as a representative work of English literature in the world literature courses of non-English speaking countries. Clearly you are right about Keats and Wordsworth (as far as their writing in the epic genre specifically, not necessarily the idea that they didn't "take"). Neither really produced works that significantly meet the standards of traditional epic.

In addition, please take Milton off the list of Renaissance English writers, it is embarrassing to your intelligence.

The ad hominem is unbecoming and inaccurate. I know what I am talking about. I am in the late stages of a PhD specializing in English Renaissance literature and teach the subject at the college level. Most literary scholars consider Milton a Renaissance poet, and most college surveys teach him as such. Since all such categories are, obviously, artificial guides, I am certainly open to arguments that would prefer to categorize his work differently, and would be genuinely interested to hear how you yourself prefer to categorize him and why, but I am in no danger of looking foolish by saying that Milton is generally considered the last of the English Renaissance poets.

[stlukesguild]

JBI- When you challenge Petrarch's Love concerning Renaissance literature I hope you realize that you (as a student) are challenging a PhD. (or soon-to-be PhD.) in her area of specialization. It might do you some good to be careful when questioning your "opponent's" intelligence under such circumstances. I would then question you myself concerning several blanket statements:

Faery Queen isn't a true epic. First of all it didn't take, second of all, it was never finished (or even close to finished)

So who has decided what exactly qualifies as an "epic" if Spencer falls short (and thus I would assume, so too does his Italian model, Orlando Furioso)? He never finished? Neither did Virgil... and Beowulf is far shorter and fragmentary in what remains. What exactly are the requirements that you imagine as being essential to any work before it might qualify as an "epic"... and by what authority were these established?

True epics require in them the ability to speak of the whole culture and situation of a time period.

Homer encompassed the tradition and culture in Greek times by focusing his epics on traditional stories with a strong focus on Arete, the Greek ideal.

Hmm... is that so? So Homer speaks for the whole of Greek culture and Virgil for the Romans and Dante for the Italians? Personally, I always felt that an artist spoke for him or herself. Wikipedia offers the following description of Epic Poetry

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_poetry

...including examples well into the present, and while Wikipedia is certainly not the last word upon anything the information here does not seem to contradict most of what Petrarch has suggested or clearly eliminate The Faerie Queene, Paradise Lost, Milton, Don Juan, Leaves of Grass, The Odyssey:a Modern Sequel, etc...

I purposely left out the Nieblungenlied because I am less familiar with it than other epics, and because it seems to me to be minor in comparison, it being derived heavily from prior works. There are several other Scandanavian epics (including a famous Finnish one which I have never completed) but none seem to me to have the influence of these.

So your unfamiliarity with a work is a valid excuse for eliminating its validity as an epic? So if you were unfamiliar with the Mahabharata, Ramayana, or Gilgamesh can be equally ignored if your reading does not extend beyond the West? And the Nibelungenlied can be dismissed because it is largely derived from earlier works...? And the Iliad, the Aeneid, and the Divine Comedy were not? As for influence... just what influence did Beowulf have? The poem was written down between the 8th and the 11th century (although it may have been composed earlier) and the only existing manuscript is dated circa 1010. It's existence was largely unknown until the 16th century and its first owner of record. The first mention of the work in print is from a letter dated 1700. Transcriptions of the manuscript were not published until 1815 and translations needed to wait until the 19th century... 1895 for the important William Morris edition. Where is the influence on world literature in that history?

Milton, Wordsworth, Keats all try to create an epic, but none of them took. None of them had the same culture importance as the others.

Huh? None of them "took"? So Paradise Lost has had less impact upon subsequent culture than Beowulf? And influence upon subsequent culture is the standard measure as to what does or does not qualify as an epic? Personally I find this to be nonsense. certainly influence is one measure of the importance of a work of art... but it is not the end-all/be-all. Even if this were so it would then largely make the question of contemporary epics an impossibility as it is impossible to know which works will or will not continue to speak to and influence future ages.

[JBI]

It isn't influence on culture but speaking for a culture. When people think Ancient Greek, they think Homer, When people think Roman, they think Virgil, when people think early Italian, they think Dante. The epic, in order to be true, must carry the heart of the time and location it is written in. By the Wiki definition, almost any book can be considered epic. You could apply their definition to any Tolkienian fantasy. You could apply it to almost any novel, pretty much, and have it classified as an epic.

I did not leave the Nieblungenlied out of my definition of an epic, I just didn't go into detail with it since I don't know enough about it. It is clearly a pre-Dante epic which classifies, but I would think Parzifal to be more of an epic of the time anyway.

The point is, if you look at it, any major poem seems to be somewhat epic in scale. A distinction is needed between a true epic, and an indistinct epic. To say that Brut and the Comedia are on the same scale is ridiculous. There is always going to be a distinction.

[JBI]

Milton could be considered a Renaissance poet, but Paradise Lost comes after the end of English Renaissance. It is in the restoration that it first appears, and it alludes to those events, rather than Renaissance events. The central focus seems to be on Revolutionary events, rather than Renaissance ideals or humanism.