Heroes, Gods and the Role of Epiphany in English Epic Poetry

This book examines how epic poetry reflects cultural values, and how, in epic poems, the heroes must meet supernatural beings to find answers to essential questions. The work begins with three chapters on ancient poetry. The first examines how the great epics of particular cultures (ancient Greece’s
Iliad
and
Odyssey , ancient India’s
Mahabharata ) address specific questions or quests inspired by their culture and also define the heroic ideals of their culture and time period.The second and third chapters explore the nearly-universal themes of duty, obligation, and personal fulfillment in ancient epic poetry, including the
Epic of Gilgamesh , the
Aeneid , and the
Bhagavad-Gita , among others. Subsequent chapters take up the main subject of the book, examining the evolution of English epic poetry from the anonymous
Old English Beowulf
to Derek Walcott’s 1990 poem
Omeros . Works covered in this section include Edmund Spenser’s
The Faerie Queene , John Milton’s
Paradise Lost , William Blake’s
Milton , William Wordworth’s
The Prelude , and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s
Aurora Leigh .