Epic
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Epic. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
a poem of length and completeness, of dignity in style and form, recounting the achievements of some hero. The name epic is from a Greek word signifying speech or discourse, but has come to be used to designate narrative poems of heroic character, as distinguished from those which are dramatic or lyrical. Epic poetry seems to fall naturally into two classes: 1. The popular, or national epic, called also the epic of growth and the folk-epic. 2. The literary, or artificial epic, called also the individual epic and the art epic. It will be seen that among primitive people many ballads, gests, or sagas would arise about some one hero, or concerning some one great event of common interest. A poet or a school of poets collects these songs and legends, and forms them into a complete whole, with more or less individual polishing, reshaping, and addition of passages. The folk-epic--the Iliad, for example--is the result. In all truly national epics, and in the greater of the art epics, the events described are represented as occurring under supernatural guidance. The literary or art epic is the entire production of an individual, but is of the character of the popular epic, that is, it is an heroic narrative of elevated and finished style. To deserve the name epic, it must be built up about some great structural theme or thought which is of universal, or at least of national import. The great national epics of literature are: Greek Iliad. German Nibelungenlied. Anglo-Saxon Beowulf. Spanish Poem of the Cid. Persian Shah Nameh . Sanskrit Ramayana, and Mahabharata. Finnish Kalevala. French Roland or Chanson de Roland . Among art epics the following may be mentioned: Greek . . . . . Odyssey. Homer. Roman . . . . . Aeneid. Virgil. Italian . . . . . Jerusalem Delivered. Tasso. English . . . . . Paradise Lost . Milton. Portuguese . . . . . Lusiad. Camoens. German . . . . . Messias. Klopstock. Italian . . . . . Divine Comedy. Dante. American . . . . . Hiawatha. Longfellow. Scholars have found difficulty in placing certain of these epics. The Iliad and the Shah Nameh seem to belong in both classes. Some authorities place the Odyssey with the epics of growth. Epics are classified often according to their subject matter, as historical, sacred, heroic, etc., and poems which can hardly claim the name epic in its larger meaning are classed as some specific form of epic. For instance, Goethe's Hermann and Dorothea is called a domestic epic. Pope's Rape of the Lock and Butler's Hudibras are called mock-epics. See Iliad; Odyssey ; Beowulf ; Nibelungen Lied ; Cid ; Literature ; Poetry ; Camoens ; Tasso ; Chanson De Roland ; Milton ; Klopstock
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a poem which narrates the history, real or fictitious, of some notable action or achievement, or series of actions or achievements, accomplished by some distinguished hero. The most celebrated epic poems are in Greek literature, the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" of Homer; in Latin, the "Enid of Vergil"; and in English, the "Paradise Lost" of Milton.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's 1910 list of the world's great epics — Iliad, Nibelungenlied, Beowulf, the Cid, Shah Nameh, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Kalevala, Roland — omits the poem now put first in almost every survey: the Babylonian Gilgamesh, whose tablets were being pieced together in the decades around these entries and which is now read in classrooms as the oldest surviving epic. The account of how a folk-epic is made, with "a poet or a school of poets" collecting ballads and polishing them into a whole, was overturned by Milman Parry's study of Homer's formulaic diction and by the fieldwork he and Albert Lord did among Serbo-Croat singers; Lord's The Singer of Tales (1960) argued that such poems were composed in performance rather than stitched together from written ballads. Scholars have also grown far less comfortable with the folk/art division itself: the Kalevala is now treated as largely Elias Lönnrot's own construction from collected songs, and Beowulf is usually credited to a single poet. Longfellow's Hiawatha, listed here as the American art epic, has dropped out of the canon almost entirely.
Written for this edition, 2026.