[ 3 / biz / cgl / ck / diy / fa / ic / jp / lit / sci / vr / vt ] [ index / top / reports ] [ become a patron ] [ status ]
2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

View post   
File: 439 KB, 1280x1960, CEB3D654-F80A-4BE6-87DC-8811B538ED69.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19022570 No.19022570 [Reply] [Original]

What is the best epic poem of the English language?

>> No.19022597
File: 326 KB, 742x742, 1551727277837.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19022597

>>19022570
>epic poem
Wow such epic bro! Epic. Poems are for faggots, guess you're a faggot. Faggot.

>> No.19022602

Even the most amateur poem in French is better than any English poem

>> No.19022697

>>19022602
I can't think of a single epic poem in French tho

>> No.19022742

>>19022597
You have to be 18 to post here

>> No.19022857

>>19022602
Milton, Donne, Keats, et al more than beat any frog

>>19022597
Imagine coming to a literature board and not knowing what an epic poem is. It’s like not knowing the difference between novel and novella

>> No.19022905

1. Clarel
2. Paradise Lost
3. Faerie Queen
4. Tale of Balen
5. Tristam of Lyonesse
6. Weeds and Wildings
7. Canterbury Tales
8. The Legend of Good Women
9. Trolius and Cresida
10. Dream of Gerontius
11. Confessio Amantis
12. Ring and the Book
13. Sordello
14. Idylls of the King
15. Harold the Dauntless
16. Lord of the Isles
17. Marmion
18. Roderick the Last of the Goths
19. Thalaba the Destroyer
20. Madoc
21. Joan of Arc - Southey
22. Endymion
23. Don Juan

Read the complete works from these poets as well:
Excluded but kino: Shakespeare's Sonnets and Plays, Coleridge's Poems and Plays, Andrew Marvell, Thomas Wyatt, Blake's Prophetic Works, Sir Philip Sidney, TS Eliot, Shelley's Epics

>> No.19022990

Paradise Lost, without a doubt.

>> No.19022994

>>19022570
Howl

>> No.19023001
File: 181 KB, 960x1500, 30642461321.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19023001

Not even close to this masterpiece

>> No.19023014
File: 1.04 MB, 3282x2145, 1387399863.0.x.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19023014

picrel

>> No.19023051

>>19022597
Are you stupid in the head

>> No.19023120

>>19022570
Moby-Dick

>> No.19023181
File: 40 KB, 600x906, i kneel.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19023181

>>19023001
joseph sama

>> No.19023201

>>19022905
Why the fuck have I never heard of Clarel. Clearly this anon is extremely based.

>> No.19023277
File: 193 KB, 914x998, Screen Shot 2021-08-31 at 2.17.43 PM.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19023277

>>19023201
>Clarel
It's kino

>> No.19023295

>>19022905
This guy knows poetry.

>> No.19023363

>>19022905
As someone who hasn't yet read Clarel but who is currently working on a doctorate thesis centering on Paradise Lost, could you briefly explain why you prefer Melville's epic to Milton's? Genuinely very curious and I don't have the time right now to start such a long and undoubtedly dense work.

>> No.19023396

>>19022570
Song of Hiawatha.

>> No.19023415
File: 220 KB, 862x1224, Screen Shot 2021-09-10 at 3.16.11 PM.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19023415

>>19023363
Any of the Top 4 are really interchangable in all honesty, but Clarel I liked the best.
Paradise Lost is probably the better work for most, since it's lucid and kind of obvious what it's getting at, whereas Clarel is mostly inaccesible.
Sure, Melville in general owes a lot to Milton, but it's really hard to describe Clarel without someone having read it. It has these extreme odd rythmn to it with it's exposition producing this sort of natural sound, like a conception of light, then it delves into theological questions that I can barely understand to the full extent, but can appreciate it. IDK it feels like a lost text and something you could read endlessly even while only partially understanding it, like you're being confronted with the truth of existence and can still only make sense of little of it.
Even the introduction to it basically says, he relinquishes this work to the world indifferent what becomes of it, his only solace is if one reads it.

>> No.19023461

>>19023415
I love it already from the excerpts you've posted and how you describe it, thank you for sharing this

I also hadn't even heard of Tale of Balen, these two are definitely going near the top of my to-read list

Do you have any information on Balen? I can find precious little through a few minutes of Googling

>> No.19023494

>>19022597
Shouldn't the reflection be flipped?

>> No.19023505
File: 162 KB, 1190x534, Screen Shot 2021-09-10 at 3.30.37 PM.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19023505

>>19023461
Balen is barely an epic, it's very short like 75 pages and just a late work from Swinburne in his aesthetic. Tristram of Lyonesse is the longer one, and I'm not sure he even considered the two epics.
Tristram is like 150 pages.

>> No.19023513

>>19023505
Interesting, thank you for all the info, clearly-well-read-and-erudite anon.

>> No.19023519
File: 217 KB, 1016x1208, Screen Shot 2021-09-10 at 3.35.03 PM.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19023519

>>19023505
>>19023461
Here's an excerpt

>> No.19023530

>>19023513
>clearly-well-read
kek we're never well-read enough :(, but thank you. Good luck on your thesis.

>> No.19023706

>>19022905
any reason you don’t mention Wordsworth’s Prelude? It’s not the best but I think it has merit

>> No.19023877

>>19023706
I knew a very annoying woman in college who loved Wordsworth, and I cannot stand her, so I don't read his works.

>> No.19024120

>>19023877
theres this really annoying woman who loves breathing

>> No.19024125

>>19022597
Please go read some books. Find a mentor or go back to school.

>> No.19024149

>>19022597
Too based

>> No.19024159

>>19023277
Oh fuggg Moby Dick was fantastic but is Clarel even better?

>> No.19024180

>>19023505

How long should an epic be?

>> No.19024196
File: 108 KB, 640x426, Marechal_Ney_à_Waterloo.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19024196

>>19022570
1805 version's got my vote

>> No.19024201

>>19024180
12 cantos ~800 lines long

>> No.19024243

>>19023120
The novel, although it is a descendant of and conserves epic features, is a different genre entirely.

>> No.19024278

>>19024243
it's not a novel

>> No.19024291

>>19022597
Kek this is funny as fuck

>> No.19024307

EPIC WIN BRO!!!

>> No.19024312
File: 12 KB, 600x44, 1630593809907.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19024312

>>19024278
?

>> No.19024337

>>19024312
novels are prosaic works about city slickers having affairs
mb is a heroic poem in prose

>> No.19024350

>>19024337
That's not what a novel is.
>poem in prose
Based retard

>> No.19024361

>>19024350
yes it is
unbased actual retard

>> No.19024385
File: 413 KB, 527x439, 1601656432451.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19024385

>>19024361
Sorry, I don't argue with people with room temperature IQ, have a good day.

>> No.19024387

>>19024159
Moby dick is to Clarel what Typee is to Moby Dick

>> No.19024394

>>19024385
you have centigrade room IQ I have kelvin room IQ

>> No.19024395

>>19024350
Prose poems exist but I'm not sure that Moby Dick is a prose poem.

>> No.19024405
File: 627 KB, 1597x1600, 562.png [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19024405

>>19022597
Based bait.

>> No.19024429

>>19024395
Do you mean blank verse? Because that is still not prose, by definition.

>> No.19024437

>>19024429
retard

>> No.19024443

>>19024437
I know you're still mad I called you a retard, baby girl. It's okay, you can cry.

>> No.19024455
File: 321 KB, 800x1311, 9782266192712.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
19024455

>>19024443
kys b2 plebbit retard

>> No.19024850

>>19022905
Good list but you forgot Pope and his epic

>> No.19024855

>>19022905
And Whitmans