The epic is long, exalted
narrative poetry, generally concerning a serious subject and details the heroic deeds and events important to a culture or nation. A work need not be written to qualify as an epic, although even the works of such great poets as
Homer,
Dante Alighieri, and
John Milton would be unlikely to have survived without being written down. The first epics are known as primary, or original, epics. Epics that attempt to imitate these like
Virgil's The Aenied and
John Milton's Paradise Lost are known as literary, or secondary, epics. Another word for epic poetry is (plural: epyllia) which is a brief
narrative poem with a
romantic or
mythological theme. The term, which means 'little ', came in use in the
Nineteenth Century. It refers primarily to the type of erotic and mythological long elegy of which
Ovid remains the master; to a lesser degree, the term includes some poems of the
English Renaissance, particularly those influenced by Ovid. One suggested example of
classical epyllion may be seen in the story of Nisus and Euryalus in Book IX of
The Aeneid.
See more at Wikipedia.org...
Free Download Now!
