Has anyone tried writing a modern epic?

[D. Gray Warrior]

Something I have always wanted to do is write a story that captures the style and feel of ancient epics like Beowulf and the Iliad.

Obviously, such a story would need to be writing a poetic style since that is how these stories were written.

I'm wondering if anyone here has tried this and how you would go about it?

Would you need to throw our modern story telling conventions for it to work?

 

[pmmg]

Tried it, no. But the book paradise lost is in this style. It is quite impressive.

 

[JBCrowson]

I have not tried, I have seen on some of the poetry websites people writing poem-stories as long as novels. None were in a fantasy setting from what I saw, but I did not have time and interest enough to read any of the works.

I would guess the story-telling would be similar, in that the elements of a good story are constant across style, genre, time, author's culture.

 

[Finchbearer]

Just short length. Nothing can really better it though. It’s meant to be spoken word - performed, so reading it feels flat.

 

[Finchbearer]

Something I have always wanted to do is write a story that captures the style and feel of ancient epics like Beowulf and the Iliad.

Obviously, such a story would need to be writing a poetic style since that is how these stories were written.

I'm wondering if anyone here has tried this and how you would go about it?

Would you need to throw our modern story telling conventions for it to work?

There are lots of modern retellings of the old epics though, so you wouldn’t have to stick to poetic prose.

 

[Karlin]

It should be poetic, if it's to be an Epic. In my mind, that means rhythm, not necessarily rhyme. I rewrote a short section of Gilgamesh with Chinese heroes. It might be interesting to post it here in the appropriate forum

 

[Mad Swede]

I think you're possibly a little confused by epics like Beowulf and the Iliad. They were meant to be told, and their style reflects the way stories were told (in terms of rythm and structure) to an audience in those cultures during those periods. That doesn't mean you should aim for a similar style when writing a modern epic. Yes, you can aim for a rythm in your text, and I've translated texts like that for a fellow author here in Sweden. It's much harder than you think to sustain that rythm even in a short story and I would suggest writing the story in a normal style to make sure the story and character arcs work before trying to put it in a certain form of prose.

 

[Prince of Spires]

Tolkien has. If you're looking for examples. Several of the stories set down in the Silmarillion originally started as Epics in the style of Beowulf. The story of Beren and Luthien for instance exists in Epic form (with both rhym and rythm). You can find them in the History of Middle Earth series. This one specifically in part 3, The Lays of Beleriand. If you're after a non-rhyming version, then I'd argue that the Silmarillion is the thing closest in feeling to those old Epics in form and prose.

If you're looking for something published this century, then I'm not sure. There's probably something out there, but nothing of similar fame.

 

[Karlin]

You may find this epic, oral tradition, interesting:Epic of Manas - Wikipedia Epic of Manas - Wikipedia

 

[Karlin]

Here is part of my own shot at it. Based on Gilgamesh, with some Biblical stuff throw in (they are not much different). If interesting, I'll post the whole thing in the appropriate forum.

Humbaba raised his voice and spoke:

“Where does your conceit come from, Monkey, Pig and Bear?

A matched set of timid beasts!

Your weapons are a cosmic joke

The cedars laugh and curse as you creep through the holy woods

Your compliant rod, a rotten cane,

That will break at the first blow

Your nine-pronged rake, a farmer’s tool

Will melt at the first sign of battle

 

[Finchbearer]

I highly recommend you give Benjamin Bagby’s Beowulf spoken performance a watch. Notice how he has remembered every single word. It gives the work the dimension in which it’s supposed to be consumed.

 

[minta]

Most have done it and it is absolutely possible without throwing away everything.

 

[xena]

Yeah, people do and it can work.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I come from a Lang and Lit in Historical Context background, so I know my way around an epic. I'd rather engage in a literary discussion with a mime than to write one of these things. I also can't rhyme to save the universe, so that might be a factor.

I've got two epics that are my favorites. First is Gilgamesh, Amazon.com This is my preferred translation, and one of our primary sources and reasons for bringing this raging try hard into our UF series.

And the other is the monster that shaped my academic career. It's The Brut, by a Welsh cleric named Lazamon. My side-by-side tranlastion - not mine mine, I didn't write it - is kept in a 3" 3 ring binder and fills it to bursting. I'm trying to get a picture of it to load, but so far the site says no dice.

 

[Mad Swede]

I come from a Lang and Lit in Historical Context background, so I know my way around an epic. I'd rather engage in a literary discussion with a mime than to write one of these things. I also can't rhyme to save the universe, so that might be a factor.

I've got two epics that are my favorites. First is Gilgamesh, Amazon.com This is my preferred translation, and one of our primary sources and reasons for bringing this raging try hard into our UF series.

And the other is the monster that shaped my academic career. It's The Brut, by a Welsh cleric named Lazamon. My side-by-side tranlastion - not mine mine, I didn't write it - is kept in a 3" 3 ring binder and fills it to bursting. I'm trying to get a picture of it to load, but so far the site says no dice.

And now I'm going to be really awkward and point out that Layamon was English and not Welsh. Brut is a Middle English poem if I remember correctly and from what my Welsh girlfriend Angharad said it's based indirectly on Gruffudd ap Arthur's book Historia Regum Britanniae (in English, Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain).

 

[Karlin]

Is rhyming essential for an epic? I think not

 

[Karlin]

Here's a MAnas recital video

 

[Adam Scribentis]

And now I'm going to be really awkward and point out that Layamon was English and not Welsh. Brut is a Middle English poem if I remember correctly and from what my Welsh girlfriend Angharad said it's based indirectly on Gruffudd ap Arthur's book Historia Regum Britanniae (in English, Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain).

Yes!

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

When I was a wee lad I wrote a fanfiction of Zelda that took place in modern times.
It was really dumb lol

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Yes!

And now I'm going to be really awkward and point out that Layamon was English and not Welsh. Brut is a Middle English poem if I remember correctly and from what my Welsh girlfriend Angharad said it's based indirectly on Gruffudd ap Arthur's book Historia Regum Britanniae (in English, Geoffrey of Monmouth's The History of the Kings of Britain).

You, sir, are a rabble rouser. You rouse rabble.

And yes, you are very right. And your girlfriend - really beautiful name - was also right. I tend to call Lazamon Welsh because there's some question as to his origins. Or there was 20 years ago. I was one of like 5 people in the discipline and the only one looking at it as a nationalist trend. Also, I brain-farted at just that moment, as I am wont to do.

And all y'all are forgetting Wace. He of the impeccable Middle French and conjuror of nightmares in translation. Wace's version leaned in hard on kissing some major French-speaking keisters. Then Lazamon, writing from Worcestershire, took the story of the foundation of England and wrote it in English. Radical for the time, because it disappears from the narrative for three centuries after the Norman Conquest. So, when Lazamon writes that the "nasty Normans" came and did bad things, and then dedicates that doorstop to Eleanor of Aquitaine (I think... I'm also lazy. lol) it meant something. And that something was, in short, "You nasty Normans can go sit in your Middle French. We're just going to be over here, violating English in every way we can."

Also fun fact: There is no 'z' in Lazamon's name. We just don't use that character or the sounds it represents, anymore. Not a terrible thing. It sounds like someone gagging a cat with a garlic wheat cracker. At one point English had three characters all making variations on "th." And then came the nasty Normans...