Epic poetry

The epic is a broadly defined genre of poetry, which retells in a continuous narrative the life and works of a heroic person or group of heroic persons either historical or mythical. The Iliad and Odyssey are often named as examples. The first epics are associated strongly with the oral poetic tradition; literate societies have often copied the format, and the first and most obvious example is the Aeneid, following the style and subject matter of Homer.

Notable epic poems, in chronological order:

• 20th century BC: The Epic of Gilgamesh (Sumerian mythology)
• 19th century BC: The Ramayana (Hindu mythology)
• 1316 BC: The Mahabharata (of which the Bhagavad Gita is a section) (Hindu mythology)
• 8th century BC:
  • The Iliad by Homer (Greek mythology)
  • The Odyssey by Homer (Greek mythology)
• 1st century BC: Aeneid by Vergil
• 9th century: Beowulf (Anglo-Saxon mythology)
• 10th century: Shahnameh
• 11th century: Le Chanson de Roland[?] (The Song of Roland)
• 13th century:
  • Edda (Norse mythology)
  • Nibelungenlied (Germanic mythology[?])
• 14th century: La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) by Dante Alighieri
• 1516: Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto
• 1596: The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser
• 17th century: Paradise Lost by John Milton
• 19th Century:
  • Don Juan by George Gordon, Lord Byron[?]
  • Clarel[?] by Herman Melville
• 1830s: Kalevala by Elias Lönnrot
• 20th Century:
  • Ballad of the White Horse[?] by G. K. Chesterton
  • The Cantos[?] by Ezra Pound
• African epic[?]

References

• Heroic Song and Heroic Legend by Jan de Vries[?] ISBN 0405105665