2 books

Ancient Epics

Ancient epic poetry is the oldest literary tradition in Western culture — oral poems of enormous scope that encode a society's values, histories, and understanding of the divine. Homer's two epics are the foundational texts; they have influenced every subsequent literary tradition in the West and remain among the most-read works of any era.

The Odyssey and The Iliad are not just historical artifacts — they are stories about recognisable human desires, fears, and failures that feel as immediate now as they did three thousand years ago. They are also the original examples of the two narrative modes that still dominate: the journey story (Odyssey) and the war story (Iliad).

• ›Oral composition patterns — repetition, epithets, invocations
• ›Gods and mortals interacting as a normal feature of the world
• ›Heroism as a complex moral category, not a simple virtue
• ›Narrative scope that encompasses years and thousands of lives