Dictionary:

epic

  (ĕp'ĭk)

1. An extended narrative poem in elevated or dignified language, celebrating the feats of a legendary or traditional hero.
2. A literary or dramatic composition that resembles an extended narrative poem celebrating heroic feats.
3. A series of events considered appropriate to an epic: the epic of the Old West.

1. Of, constituting, having to do with, or suggestive of a literary epic: an epic poem.
2. Surpassing the usual or ordinary, particularly in scope or size: “A vast musical panorama . . . it requires an epic musical understanding to do it justice” (Tim Page).
3. Heroic and impressive in quality: “Here in the courtroom . . . there was more of that epic atmosphere, the extra amperage of a special moment” (Scott Turow).

[From Latin epicus, from Greek epikos, from epos, word, song.]

(Explicitly Parallel Instruction Computing) The parallel architecture used in Intel's IA-64 chips. It was originally developed by HP. See IA-64.

Definition: long story
Antonyms: short story

epic, a long narrative poem celebrating the great deeds of one or more legendary heroes, in a grand ceremonious style. The hero, usually protected by or even descended from gods, performs superhuman exploits in battle or in marvellous voyages, often saving or founding a nation–as in Virgil's Aeneid (30–20 BC)–or the human race itself, in Milton's Paradise Lost (1667). Virgil and Milton wrote what are called ‘secondary’ or literary epics in imitation of the earlier ‘primary’ or traditional epics of Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey (c. 8th century BCE) are derived from an oral tradition of recitation. They adopted many of the conventions of Homer's work, including the invocation of a muse, the use of epithets, the listing of heroes and combatants, and the beginning in medias res (for other epic conventions, see epic simile, formulaic, machinery). The Anglo‐Saxon poem Beowulf (8th century BCE) is a primary epic, as is the oldest surviving epic poem, the Babylonian Gilgamesh (c.3000 BCE). In the Renaissance, epic poetry (also known as ‘heroic poetry’) was regarded as the highest form of literature, and was attempted in Italian by Tasso in Gerusalemme Liberata (1575), and in Portuguese by Camoëns in Os Lusiadas (1572). Other important national epics are the Indian Mahābhārata (3rd or 4th century BCE) and the German Nibelungenlied (c.1200). The action of epics takes place on a grand scale, and in this sense the term has sometimes been extendeded to long romances, to ambitious historical novels like Tolstoy's War and Peace (1863–9), and to some large‐scale film productions on heroic or historical subjects. For a fuller account, consult Paul Merchant, The Epic (1971).

For more information on epic, visit Britannica.com.

epic (from Gk. epē, ‘hexameters’; see METRE, GREEK 3). In literature, an epic is a narrative poem on the grand scale and in majestic style concerning the exploits and adventures of a superhuman hero (or heroes) engaged in a quest or some serious endeavour. The hero is distinguished above all men by his strength and courage, and is restrained only by a sense of honour. The subject-matter of epic includes myth, legend, history, and folk tale. It is usually set in a heroic age of the past and embodies its country's early history and expresses its values. Battles and perilous journeys play a large part, as do gods, the supernatural, and magic; scenes are often set in the Underworld or in heaven. Certain formal features are conspicuous: the narrator vouches for the truth of his story; there are invocations, elaborate greetings, long speeches, detailed similes, digressions, and the frequent repetition of ‘typical’ elements, for example the stock adjective or formula, the stock scene such as the hero arming for battle. Epic expresses a delight in the physical world, shown by painstaking descriptions of such things as arms, clothing, or ships.

1. Greek epic and the Epic Cycle. Epic poetry in the shape of the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer is the earliest surviving form of Greek literature; the origins of these poems are lost, but they probably go back to Mycenaean times. From the incident of Odysseus asking the bard Demodocus (Odyssey 8) to sing of the ruse of the Trojan Horse it is clear that there was a corpus of sagas on which a bard could draw. What the bard recited (or rather chanted, to the lyre) would be a story taken from an existing body of myth but with no fixed text (and before literacy with no written text at all); rather it was an improvisation made up for each occasion with the help of stylized elements of phrasing or formulae, previously memorized, developed by a long succession of bards. The relationship between the early type of oral epic narrative and the Homeric poems as they now exist is still far from clear, but it is commonly thought that with the advent of alphabetic writing into the Greek world in the second half of the eighth century BC the Homeric poems were committed to writing in something like their present form, perhaps by a bard called Homer. It is at least clear that they embody traditional material of a much earlier date.

The Epic Cycle is the name given to a collection of epics (excluding the Iliad and Odyssey), of which only some 120 lines now survive, written by various poets in the seventh and sixth centuries BC, which could be arranged so as to make a chronological narrative extending from the beginning of the world to the end of the heroic age. Some of these poems were occasionally ascribed to Homer. They seem to have been well known in the fifth and fourth centuries BC but little read later; a writer of the sixth century AD declares that they are no longer to be found, and our knowledge of their contents derives in part from summaries made in antiquity by Proclus. There was a Trojan cycle completing the story of the Trojan War. The epics comprising it are the Cypria (covering the preliminaries of the Trojan War), Aethiopis, Little Iliad, Iliupersis, Nostoi (‘home-comings’ of the heroes), and the Telegonia (concerning Telegonus). There was also a Theban cycle, the narrative of the legends of Thebes, which included the Thebaïs. These formed the storehouse from which Greek dramatic and lyric poets drew many of their subjects.

The last great epic poet of archaic Greece seems to have been Panyassis, a kinsman of Herodotus, who flourished in the early fifth century BC and wrote an epic on Heracles. By the end of the fifth century Greek epic writing had lost its spontaneity and was becoming allusive and even pedantic, as is clear from the sparse fragments of Antimachus of Colophon and Choerilus of Samos (the latter noteworthy in having composed an epic, the Persica, on a historical subject, the Persian Wars). Some later epic still survives. In the third century BC the Hellenistic poet Apollonius Rhodius wrote the Argonautica in four books; in the fourth century AD Quintus of Smyrna wrote the Posthomerica in fourteen books, to fill the gap between the events of the Iliad and of the Odyssey, and in the fifth century AD Nonnus wrote the Dionysiaca in forty-eight books.

2. Roman epic. Epic was introduced at Rome in the third century BC in a Latin version of Homer's Odyssey rendered into saturnian metre (see METRE, LATIN 1) by Livius Andronicus. It seems from the remaining fragments to have been an adaptation rather than a translation of Homer, but it became a famous and influential work. Naevius in the late second century BC undertook an entirely original piece of work by composing an epic in saturnian metre on the Punic Wars. The Annales of Ennius, an epic in eighteen books on the history of Rome, was a work in which the dactylic hexameter was applied to Latin epic for the first time. The greatest Roman epic was the Aeneid of Virgil, who was influenced in its composition not only by the Homeric Greek epics but also by Ennius and other Latin hexameter poets. In the Silver Age Latin epic became rhetorical in character and seems written with the intention that it should be declaimed. The best epic of that age was Lucan's Pharsalia. Other epic poets of the empire whose works survive in part were Silius Italicus, Valerius Flaccus, Statius, and Claudian. Among those whose works are lost were Cornelius Severus (praised by Ovid and Quintilian) who wrote historical poems, and Albinovanus Pedo, author of a Theseid and a poem on the campaigns of Germanicus.

Epic was an acronym for the "End Poverty in California" movement, an effort to promote left-liberal candidates within the Democratic Party in California and Washington State in 1934. Upton Sinclair formed the movement in 1933 and ran under its banner as the Democratic candidate for governor of California. Calling for "Production for Use and Not for Profit," Sinclair supported higher taxes on corporations, utilities, and the wealthy, along with a network of state factories and land colonies for the unemployed. The twelve principles of EPIC and its twelve political planks alarmed the Democratic Party establishment but deeply appealed to factions of an electorate concerned about the contemporary economic depression. By election day there were almost two thousand EPIC clubs in California. Sinclair lost the election by a small margin, but twenty-seven EPIC candidates won seats in California's eighty-seat legislature. In Washington, EPIC backers elected a U.S. senator.

Bibliography

McElvaine, Robert S. The Great Depression: America, 1929–1941. New York: Times Books, 1993.

McIntosh, Clarence F. "The Significance of the End-Poverty in-California Movement." The Pacific Historian 27 (1983): 21–25.

Sinclair, Upton. I, Governor of California, and How I Ended Poverty. A True Story of the Future. New York: Farrar and Rinehard, 1933.

—James Duane Squires/C. P.

A long narrative poem written in elevated style, in which heroes of great historical or legendary importance perform valorous deeds. The setting is vast in scope, covering great nations, the world, or the universe, and the action is important to the history of a nation or people. The Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid are some great epics from world literature, and two great epics in English are Beowulf and Paradise Lost.

An extended narrative poem, usually simple in construction, but grand in scope, exalted in style, and heroic in theme, often giving expression to the ideals of a nation or race.

Tutor's tip: The "epic" (a long poem or other writing telling of a nation's heroic acts) adventure tale takes place during the "epoch" (a period of time in history or in geology) after the Bronze Age.

Dansk (Danish)
n. - epos, heltedigt, episk digtning
adj. - episk, historisk, imponerende, heroisk

Nederlands (Dutch)
Oudgrieks, epos, legendarische gebeurtenis, episch, legendarisch, heldhaftig

Français (French)
n. - poésie épique, épopée, (Cin) film à grand spectacle
adj. - (Littérat) épique, (fig) héroïque, épique, homérique (hum)

Deutsch (German)
n. - Epos
adj. - episch, monumental

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - έπος, επικό ποίημα
adj. - επικός

Italiano (Italian)
epica, poema epico, epopea, epico

Português (Portuguese)
n. - epopéia (f), poema (m) sobre fato grandioso
adj. - épico, epopéico, heróico

Русский (Russian)
эпопея, киноэпопея, эпический, героический, легендарный

Español (Spanish)
n. - épica, poema épico, epopeya
adj. - épico

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - epos
adj. - episk, grandios

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
史诗, 叙事诗, 史诗的, 叙事诗的

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 史詩, 敘事詩
adj. - 史詩的, 敘事詩的

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 서사시
adj. - 서사시의, 웅장한

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - 叙事詩, 叙事詩的物語, 大作
adj. - 叙事詩の, 雄壮な

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) قصيدة قصصيه, ملحمه (صفه) طويل, ملحمي‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮אפוס, שיר-עלילה, אפיקה‬
adj. - ‮רב-עלילה, אפי, של גבורה‬

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