epic

epic

1. Epic is a term traditionally applied (first as an adjective, later as a noun) to narrative poems that celebrate the achievements of the heroes of history or legend, such as the Iliad, the Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, Milton's Paradise Lost, the Chanson de Roland, the Old English elegiac poem Beowulf, and the Hindu Mahābhārata and Rāmāyana. The name normally applied to Old Norse narrative poems of this kind is saga.

2. The word has been extended in more recent usage to refer to any major literary work, theatrical performance, or (especially) film, which has some claim to be regarded as exceptional in terms of its length, subject matter, or scale of treatment:

• I want very much to see the Birth of a Nation, which is said to be a really great film, an epic in pictures —Aldous Huxley, 1916

• Talking of films, Meier is still working on his wild, underground epic, Snowball, as well as producing a new Hollywood movie called MM —Face, 1992.

It has also gone full circle in acquiring a new adjectival meaning ‘great, heroic’ in various applications when used attributively (before a noun):

• The Communists' Red Army had just completed its epic Long March from the Southeast to its new headquarters at Yenan —Time, 1977

• In his epic landscape of Jerusalem executed in April of 1830, Roberts draws the Holy City in silhouette —R. Fisk, 1991

• It was from fear of his intellect sinking into torpor that he finally took up the battle against drink. It was an epic struggle, marked by his terrible and yet frequently comic accounts of failure after failure —Independent, 2000.