a. and sb. Also 6–9 epick, 7 epique, (epik). [ad. L. epicus, a. Gr. ἐπικός, f. ἔπος word, narrative, song. Cf. Fr. épique.]
A. adj.
1. Pertaining to that species of poetical composition (see EPOS), represented typically by the Iliad and Odyssey, which celebrates in the form of a continuous narrative the achievements of one or more heroic personages of history or tradition.
Epic dialect: that form of the Greek language in which the epic poems were written.
1589. Puttenham, Eng. Poesie (Arb.), 76. Harding a Poet Epick or Historicall.
1644. Milton, Educ. (1738), 139. Teaches what the Laws are of a true Epic Poem.
1666. Dryden, Ann. Mirab., Let. Sir R. Howard. The same images serve equally for the Epique Poesie, and for the Historique and Panegyrique.
1710. Steele, Tatler, No. 106, ¶ 1. Three and twenty Descriptions of the Sun-rising that might be of great Use to an Epick Poet.
1752. Johnson, Rambler, No. 202, ¶ 6. To be poor, in the epick language, is only not to command the wealth of nations.
1819. Byron, Juan, I. cc. My poem ’s Epic, and is meant to be Divided in twelve books.
1841–4. Emerson, Ess. Poet, Wks. (Bohn), I. 165. The epic poet … must drink water out of a wooden bowl.
1879. B. Taylor, Stud. Germ. Lit., 73. Tennyson has endeavored to imitate the old epic simplicity.
absol. a. 1637. B. Jonson, Discoveries (1641), 132. The best masters of the Epick, Homer and Virgil.
2. Such as is described in epic poetry.
1847. Tennyson, Princess, Prol. 219. Some great Princess, six feet high, Grand, epic, homicidal.
B. sb.
† 1. An epic poet. Obs.
a. 1637. B. Jonson, Horace’s Art Poet. (1640), 3. Now to like of this, Lay that aside, the Epick; [later ed. Epic’s] office is.
2. An epic poem.
1706. A. Bedford, Temple Mus., ii. 33. One of them was the Goddess of Elegies … and another of Epicks.
1789. J. Campbell, Eccl. & Lit. Hist. Irel., 170 (T.). He [Mr. M’Pherson] brought forward his counterfeit epicks (the alleged poems of Ossian).
1833. Coleridge, Table-t., 23 Oct. The Homeric epic, in which all is purely external and objective, and the poet is a mere voice.
1876. Green, Short Hist., viii. 583. The most popular of all English poems has been the Puritan epic of the ‘Paradise Lost.’
b. transf. A composition comparable to an epic poem.
The typical epics, the Homeric poems, the Nibelungenlied, etc., have often been regarded as embodying a nation’s conception of its own past history, or of the events in that history which it finds most worthy of remembrance. Hence by some writers the phrase national epic has been applied to any imaginative work (whatever its form) that is considered to fulfil this function.
1840. Carlyle, Heroes (1858), 266–7. August Wilhelm Schlegel has a remark on his Historical Plays, Henry Fifth and the others, which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National Epic.
1869. Freeman, Norm. Conq. (1876), III. xiv. 328. To turn from the glowing strains of the Norwegian prose epic.
3. fig. A story, or series of events, worthy to form the subject of an epic.
1831. Lytton, Godolphin, lxiii. This starry and weird incident in the epic of life’s common career.
1866. Motley, Dutch Rep., VI. vii. 898. That life was a noble Christian epic.
