The Viability of the Epic

Abstract

The question of how far a literary form is appropriate to any given period is a basic one. In the case of the epic the whole problem is an especially acute and pressing one. For probably no opinion is, or has been, more widely and uncritically accepted in literary discussion than that which contends, usually as a matter of indisputable fact, that the epic is a thing of the past. The epic is believed to have long proved its unfitness for what we have to say and to have consequently ceased to exist or at least to be of any relevance or significance. On the other hand, however, the fact remains that the desire to write epic poetry has not altogether died out. Again and again writers have selected the epic, or something more akin to the epic than to anything else, as the most suitable form for whatever they had to say. In a study in which we intend to investigate the products of such writers over the past one hundred years or so, we shall do well to deal with this general problem at the very outset.

“... das Epos ist verkümmert, und wenn heute ein zweiter Homer geboren würde, so trüge die Erde einen Unglücklichen mehr, aber wir würden keine zweite Iliade erhalten.” Friedrich Hebbel