What is an epic genre? The fact is that it is impossible to answer this question unequivocally. This is due to the fact that this genre contains several varieties. Let's see that this is an epic genre, and what directions does it contain? And also that connects the epic and the lyrics.
What is a literary genre?
It seems that at the beginning of the story about the genres of epic works it would be appropriate to understand the concept of the literary genre as such. The word "genre" comes from the French genre, taken from Latin, where there is the word genus, both of which mean "species, genus."
As for the literary genre, it is such groups of works of literature that are formed historically and are united by a combination of a number of properties. Such properties are both informative and formal. In this they differ from literary forms, which are distinguished only on the basis of formal features. Often the genre is confused with the kind of literature that is wrong.
Now we turn to a direct examination of the question that this is an epic genre.
What is the essence of the concept?
The epic (as the genre we are considering is also called) is a kind of literature (just like drama and lyrics) that tells about events that were supposedly taking place in the past. And the narrator recalls them. A characteristic feature of the epic is the coverage of being in such various aspects as:
- Plastic bulk.
- Extent in time and space.
- The plot, or eventfulness.
Aristotle on the character of the epic
Ancient Greek philosopher of the 4th century BC e. Aristotle in his work "Poetics" wrote that the epic genre is (in contrast to dramatic and lyrical works) the impartiality and objectivity of the author at the time of the story. According to Aristotle, the features of the epic are as follows:
- A wide coverage of reality, which means the image and the private life of individual characters, and phenomena occurring in public life.
- The disclosure of the characters of people in the course of the plot.
- Objectivity in the narrative, in which the author’s attitude to his heroes and the world depicted in the work, occurs through the selection of artistic details.
Varieties of Epic
As mentioned above, there are several types of epic genres that can be combined on the basis of their volume. These are large, medium and small. Each of these types includes the following varieties:
- Major epic, novel, epic poem (epic poem).
- The medium includes such a kind as a story.
- Among the small ones are called a story, short story and essay.
Some details about the varieties of works that belong to epic genres will be described below.
What else needs to be noted? There are also folklore, folk and epic genres such as epics, fairy tales and historical songs.
What else is the meaning of the epic?
Features of this genre are also as follows:
- The work relating to the epic is not limited in its volume. According to V.E. Khalizev, who was a Soviet and Russian literary critic, the epic refers to a kind of literature that includes not only short stories, but also works designed for long reading or listening - epics, novels.
- In the epic genre, the image of the narrator (narrator) plays a large role. Talking about the events themselves, about the characters, at the same time he delimits himself from what is happening. But at the same time, the narrative itself reproduces and imprints not only what is being told, but also the narrator’s mentality, its manner of presentation.
- In the epic genre, there is the possibility of using almost any artistic means known in the literature. The narrative form inherent in it allows the deepest penetration into the inner world of an individual person.
Two large forms
The leading genre of epic literature until the 18th century was an epic poem. The source of its plot is folk tradition, the images of which are generalized and idealized. The speech reflects a relatively unified national consciousness, and the form, as a rule, is poetic. An example is Homer's poems "Iliad" and "Odyssey."
In the 18-19 centuries, it was replaced by a novel as a leading genre. The plots of the novels are mainly drawn from modern reality, and the images become more individualized. The heroes' speech reflects the multilingualism of public consciousness, which is sharply differentiated. The form of the novel is prosaic. Examples include novels written by Leo Tolstoy and Fedor Dostoevsky.
Looping
Epic works tend to reflect life realities as fully as possible, therefore they tend to unite in cycles. An illustration of this trend is the John Galsworthy epic novel entitled The Foresight Saga.
It is a monumental series of diverse works describing the life of a wealthy Forsyth family. In 1932, for the inherent art of storytelling in Galsworthy, in which the pinnacle is The Forsyte Saga, the writer was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Epic - means "storytelling"
The epic (from the ancient Greek ἔπος - “word, narrative” and ποιέω - “I create”) is an extensive narrative that is set forth either in verse or in prose, and is dedicated to outstanding historical events of a national scale. In a general sense, an epic is a complex, long history that includes a number of large-scale events.
The predecessors of the epic were former songs, which were half lyrical, half narrative in nature. They were caused by the exploits of a tribe or clan, confined to the heroes around whom they were grouped. Similar songs formed into large-scale poetic units called epics.
In epics related to the heroic-romance, their main characters purposefully and actively participate in significant historical events, in the process of which their personality is formed, as, for example, in the novel by A. N. Tolstoy "Peter I". There are also epics "moral descriptive", which tell about the state of society in a comic manner, such as, for example, "Gargantua and Pantagruel" Rabelais or "Dead Souls" of Gogol.
Epic and lyrical genres
The two genres are interconnected and in some cases can make up some kind of symbiosis. To understand this, let us define the lyrics. This word comes from the Greek λυρικός, which means "performed to the sound of the lyre."
This kind of literature, also called lyric poetry, reproduces a person’s personal feeling, his attitude to something, or the mood of the author himself. The works in this genre are characterized by emotionality, sincerity, emotion.
But there is an intermediate option between verses and the epic genre - this is a lyro-epic. There are two sides to such works. One of them is observation and assessment by the reader on the part of the plot narrative, presented in the form of poems. And the second, which, however, is closely related to the first, is that he receives a certain lyrical (emotional) assessment of the narrator. Thus, both the epic and lyrical principles in the reflection of the surrounding reality are characteristic of the lyro-epic.
To the lyro-epic are such genres as:
- A novel in poetry.
- Poem.
- Ballad.
- Stanza.