Epic Poetry

Epic Poetry is poetry of a narrative kind, and generally dealing with elevated and heroic stories.

Examples are the Iliad and Odyssey of Homer, Milton's Paradise Lost, Dante's Divina Commedia, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, Tasso's Girusalemme Liberata, Spenser's Faery Queen, the German Nibelungenlied. Pope's Rape of the Lock is an example of the mock-heroic epic, and the German Reynard the Fox and Homer's Battle of the Frogs are examples of the animal epic. The word is also used as an adjective to denote "fit for epic poetry," as when Tennyson speaks of a Princess "grand, epic, homicidal."