Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the epic. In his essay 'Why the novel matters', DH Lawrence argued that the novel contained all aspects of life. Perhaps better placed to make that claim is the epic. From tackling questions of identity, history, warfare, mortality and the ways of the Gods to narrating tales of magic and supernatural creatures, it was the Greek and Roman poems of Homer and Virgil that underpinned and explained the position of men in the world. And it was these narratives of heroic actions and grand deeds that were to form a template from which many future epics would be constructed from Chaucer's Troilus and Cressayde to Milton’s Paradise Lost. But who are the heroes of these epics? To what extent was the classical epic a political project, a means of creating a founding myth for empire? How did the Renaissance revive the form and how successful were writers such as Milton in rendering the Christian story an epic? And what does the novel owe to the epic?With, John Carey, Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Oxford University; Karen Edwards, Lecturer in English at Exeter University; Oliver Taplin, Professor of Classical Languages and Literature at the University of Oxford.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
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| 0:46.6 | the program. |
| 0:47.6 | Hello in his essay Why the Novel Matters, D. H. Lawrence argued that the novel contained all aspects of life. |
| 0:55.8 | Perhaps even better place to make that claim is the epic, from tackling questions of identity, |
| 1:00.4 | history, warfare, mortality, and the ways of the gods. To narrating tales of magic and |
| 1:05.8 | supernatural creatures, it was the Greek and Roman poems of Homer and Virgil that |
| 1:09.8 | underpinned and explained the position of man in the world. |
| 1:13.0 | And it was these narratives of heroic actions and grand deeds |
| 1:16.0 | that were to form a template from which many future epics would be constructed |
| 1:20.0 | from Chaucer's Troilus and Cresdder to Milton's Paradise Lost, to Joyce's Ulysses, to John Ford's |
| 1:25.5 | Westerns. But who are the heroes of these epics? To what extent was the classical epic, a political |
| 1:30.6 | project, a means of creating a founding myth for empire. |
| 1:34.0 | How did the Renaissance revive the form and how successful a writer such as Milton |
| 1:38.8 | in rendering the Christian story, an epic? And what do novels and films today owe to the Epic? |
| 1:45.0 | With me to discuss the Epic, a emeritus professor of English literature at Oxford University. |
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