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No single author (each is a product of the oral tradition) Written down after centuries of oral transmission e. g., Beowulf and the Iliad
A single, gifted poet such as Virgil or Milton composes a work that imitates a folk epic. The neid and Paradise Lost, for example, involved considerable research and have the style of earlier epics (particularly in setting, dignified speeches, and extended similes.
General Characteristics
1. Primary epics were originally intended to be sung or recited to music: "Sing, Muse . . . ." 2. In primary epics, deities and other supernatural agencies are often involved in human affairs: "What god was it . . . ?" asks Homer in the famous epic question that opens the Iliad. 3. The poem often has national interest and has a national bias: "and brought low the souls of so many Acheans" (Iliad, Book I). 4. Primary epics seem generated by periods of upheaval, of struggle and adventure, such as the Trojan War for Homer's epics and the Moslem invasion of Europe in the Song of Roland. 5. Often, the principal characters are larger-than-life demigods (descendants of deities) or heroes of immense stature and strength. They represent such cultural ideals are endurance and cunning (Odysseus), allround virtue or arte(Achilles), fair play and selflessness (Beowulf), chivalric self-sacrifice (Roland), or Christian love (Adam). 6. In both kinds of epic, single combat is a common plot device; if the warriors are equals, such as Achilles and Hector, they fight with sword and spear; if the adversaries are not equally heroic, as in the case of Odysseus and the suitors, the protagonist may use lesser weapons such as a bow. The hero often has a special weapon (e. g., Achilles' Pelian ash spear) or quality (e. g., Odysseus's ability to adopt disguises). 7. The subject of the poem is announced in the opening lines, in an invocation (in which the poet calls for divine assistance to tell his tale) and epic question in classical epics. 8. As opposed to the epyllion (such as the 892-line "Sohrab and Rustum" and Paradise Regained), the true epic is long (the Iliad and the Odyssey each contain 24 books) and dignified (courtly address and epithet are common). 9. Geographical and temporal settings are wide: the action of the Odyssey, for example, occurs across all of the known world of the Greeks over a twenty-year period. However, the action may be compressed into a matter of days (as in the case of the Iliad) or even hours (as in the case of the Song of Roland). The Odyssey takes roughly forty days. 10. Such great issues as the founding of the Roman race and the state (the AEneid) are at stake.
An epic or heroic poem falls into one of two patterns, both established by Homer: the structure (and allegory to life) may be either war or journey, and the hero may be on a quest (as Odysseus is) or pursuing conquest (as Achilles is). Features of legend building evident in epic include the following: 1. the hero's near-invulnerability (Achilles' heel, the spot on Seigfried's back); 2. the hero's fighting without conventional weapons (as in Beowulf's wrestling Grendel); 3. the hero's inglorious youth (again, Beowulf affords an example); 4. the hero's auspicious birth (for example, Christ's or Buddha's), an attempt at the reconstruction of the early life of a notable adult (ex., stories of Jesus' childhood); 5. transference of the deeds and events associated with one hero to another of similar name (for example, Saint Patrick and Sir Gawain). Such events would include the gods' arming a hero (a metaphor for wondrous strength so great it must have seemed to have divine origins) and the hero's descending to the Underworld (a metaphor for facing and overcoming death); 6. historical inclusiveness: the poem presents a whole culture in microcosm although the action is localized (for example, Troy and its environs in Homer's Iliad), flashbacks and inset narratives widen the epic's geographical and chronological scope to include the whole of that race's world and culture heroes; 7. the hero is a dramatic protagonist in each scene of a play (notice the emphasis on dialogue and set speeches) that is too big for any stage. Milton employed the epic machinery of Homer and Virgil while attempting to redefine their heroic ethos from that of the man of action to that of the man of patient endurance and love. In attempting to make this shift Milton was recognizing that the heroic poem is essentially non-Christian since it is based on the deeds of a man of physical action, a warrior and military leader. Although an epic may be either a folk original (primary), passed on for centuries through the oral tradition, or imitative and literary (secondary, it must be unified in plot and action, and not episodic like Dante'sCommedia.
Related Materials
The Primary and Secondary Epic The Heroic Poem, or The Epic: A Family Rather Than a Genre Justifying God's Ways to Man (and Woman): The Victorian Long Poem