Favorite National Epic?

[jimmy olsen]

The US epic is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

This isn't even a subject of debate.

I'm reading this to my wife right now. It is very much not what she expected.

Did I miss your wife being horribly blinded?

[Admiral Yi]

Have you read the final chapters?  Ahab drops his pipe and screams "FROM HELL'S HEART, I STAB AT THEE!"  Somehow I doubt Ford ever said that on a production line.

Timmy, fine, the largest vertebrate that wasn't a blue whale ever.

Is drama queenery sufficient to make an epic?

[jimmy olsen]

Have you read the final chapters?  Ahab drops his pipe and screams "FROM HELL'S HEART, I STAB AT THEE!"  Somehow I doubt Ford ever said that on a production line.

Timmy, fine, the largest vertebrate that wasn't a blue whale ever.

Is drama queenery sufficient to make an epic?

I don't understand your objection to Moby Dick, cleary it is an epic work.

[The Brain]

The problem with Moby Dick is that it isn't a national epic.

[Admiral Yi]

I don't understand your objection to Moby Dick, cleary it is an epic work.

I always thought that to qualify as an epic a story had to (a) have a large scale ad (b) the protagonist had to do something heroic.

[Savonarola]

I always thought that to qualify as an epic a story had to (a) have a large scale ad (b) the protagonist had to do something heroic.

Star Wars is America's national epic, in that sense.

[Malthus]

The US epic is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

This isn't even a subject of debate.

I'm reading this to my wife right now. It is very much not what she expected.

Did I miss your wife being horribly blinded?

I read to her all the time, because she likes being read to. I wasn't aware that horrible mutilation was mandatory.

[Sheilbh]

I don't get Moby Dick and Huck Finn (and Don Quixote for that matter).  To qualify as an epic, doesn't the main character need to do something, you know...epic?

It depends.  Different cultures have different requirements of epic. 

For example, the Anglo-Saxons were obsessed with an idea of decline and saw the world as fate-filled and largely doomed to suffer.  Because of that their epic (which is in itself a sort of decline, they remember it as migrants, it's the great Danish story for the English) isn't a linear story; it's cycilical and full of fore-shadowing of the tragedy that will befall everyone.  Within the first 100 lines it's established the rise of this great royal house but it says of one king that he built Heorot, which will later burn.  The fire and war that destroys Heorot is later recalled when, at the end, women stand around Beowulf's pyre weeping and singing funeral lays.  The poem ends roughly with the poet making you know that everyone there knew that without their protector Beowulf's lands would be invaded and all his people would die or be made slaves.

Beowulf himself is heroic, but the point that comes across in the text isn't that there needs to be an epic, great hero.  It's that society needs to be cohesive, promises must be kept and everyone needs to do the thing they're meant to do.  So Beowulf dies because the soldiers he's taken with him generally don't stand and fight with him as they should but run away.  Then Wiglaf goes back and that small, seemingly insignificant character saves the day, but it's too late to save Beowulf.  He returns and rebukes the cowards.  This is a very common theme in Anglo-Saxon literature.  In the Battle of Maldon and the Fight and Finnsburgh the failure of one side is almost always caused by a group of warriors failing to live up to their promises made in the hall and failing to fight.  Victory or defeat isn't dominated by one man, it's to do with social values and a certain cohesiveness.

And then compare that with, say, the Aeneid.  Everyone interprets epic differently.  Dante does something epic (he goes through hell and returns and through purgatory and heaven without being dead) but he's not a hero.  Satan's the hero of Paradise Lost and so on.

It was an industrial activity.

What could be more epically American than industry?

[Lucidor]

Kalevala... Listening to it on the radio for the last few weeks. Great stuff!

[The Brain]

The US epic is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

This isn't even a subject of debate.

I'm reading this to my wife right now. It is very much not what she expected.

Did I miss your wife being horribly blinded?

I read to her all the time, because she likes being read to. I wasn't aware that horrible mutilation was mandatory.

Reading whole books to adults is extremely rare outside Toronto.

[Martinus]

I voted the Iliad, but I like the Odyssey better.  Your selection of poll options is a bit odd... but then again, you're Spellus (or used to be).

Bitch, I was going to say exactly the same thing (voted for Illiad but prefer Odyssey). Stop parroting me.

[Savonarola]

Have you read the final chapters?  Ahab drops his pipe and screams "FROM HELL'S HEART, I STAB AT THEE!"  Somehow I doubt Ford ever said that on a production line.

Indeed, they were careful to keep Jews out of the factory when Henry was around.

[Malthus]

The US epic is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

This isn't even a subject of debate.

I'm reading this to my wife right now. It is very much not what she expected.

Did I miss your wife being horribly blinded?

I read to her all the time, because she likes being read to. I wasn't aware that horrible mutilation was mandatory.

Reading whole books to adults is extremely rare outside Toronto.

I doubt your favorite farm animals really miss it.

[Martinus]

Shouldn't England's be King Arthur?

There isn't a single poem about King Arthur. And I don't think Morte d'Arthur is epic enough on its own.

It really depends on what you consider a "national epic". Is it the theme or the author that counts? If the latter, then Paradise Lost is definitely the English epic.

[Malthus]

Have you read the final chapters?  Ahab drops his pipe and screams "FROM HELL'S HEART, I STAB AT THEE!"  Somehow I doubt Ford ever said that on a production line.

Indeed, they were careful to keep Jews out of the factory when Henry was around.