Lascelles Abercrombie Quotes

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

Poetry is the work of poets, not of peoples or communities; artistic creation can never be anything but the production of an individual mind.

By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.

But the gravest difficulty, and perhaps the most important, in poetry meant solely for recitation, is the difficulty of achieving verbal beauty, or rather of making verbal beauty tell.

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.

Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do... -Lascelles Abercrombie

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

Discovering the context

This quote comments on the classification of epic poetry and suggests that sagas, a form of historical narrative, may not fit the strict criteria or conventions typically associated with epic poetry.

There is only one thing which can master the perplexed stuff of epic material into unity; and that is, an ability to see in particular human experience some significant symbolism of man's general destiny.

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