Roman-epic - what is it? Examples

Any person who aspires to self-education has heard about such a concept as "epic". What it is, everyone must know. After all, already from the school bench we get acquainted with such masterpieces of world literature as "Iliad" and "War and Peace". However, not everyone knows about the distinctive features and peculiarities of this genre.

What is an epic

In the literature this concept is used for a significant volume of work, both poetic and prosaic, which affects the national themes. In the period of the formation of literature such literary works described the most important events for the people of that time. Among the main themes was the heroic biographies, military clashes, mythological motifs.

Examples

In later epic novels, it is no longer the formation of society that is depicted, but its terrible position with the help of comic means. Among such novels, the poem "Dead Souls" by the famous Ukrainian writer N. Gogol is especially prominent.

Romance-epic as a phenomenon of literature passed a long-term development, which was the reason for the emergence of many of its varieties. There are two types of such works. The first includes novels in which the characters of the main characters develop under the influence of events of a national-historical scale. For example, "War and Peace", "After the Storm", "Quiet Flows the Don". Another type can be attributed to works in which the evolution of heroes occurs during their participation in important historical events. For example, "Red Wheel", "Peter the First".

Character traits

Any kind of works has its own distinctive features, and the epic novel is no exception. What it is, it was said above, but in order to be able to refer a work to this type, it is necessary to familiarize yourself with its features, among which are listed below.

• The novel-epic depicts the national past of the people.
• Very often this work is based on national traditions.
• Usually the time of the novel is separated from the present.

Such distinctive features were singled out by the famous researcher and literary critic M. M. Bakhtin.

Classic epics

The novels that have become classic examples of the epic include works such as the Iliad and Odyssey (the epic of ancient Greece), the Ramayana and the Mahabharata (the epic of ancient India), and the Song of Roland (France).

Romance + epic

That this concept combines the elements of both the novel and the epic, it is clear even from the title. From the novel, these works have adopted descriptions of the fate of specific personalities, from the epic - the formation of heroes against the background of nationally significant historical events that affect the fate of the whole people. This leads to the fact that in the novel-epic often you can find not only mass scenes and descriptions of specific historical events, but also the disclosure of the inner world of certain heroes.

"War and Peace"

The best-known not only in Russia, but also in the whole world, a novel-epic is the works of Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. The author personally wrote an article about the genre he attributes his creation to. It was published in the "Russian Archives" in March 1868.

In his article Tolstoy says that he regards his novel neither as a poem nor as a historical chronicle. However, it is in this work that one can observe the outline of the evolution of the inner world of heroes, which occurs against the backdrop of historical events, that is exactly what the epic usually describes. That this is exactly the same is evidenced by the fact that the author wrote the history of the people, and not of a particular person.

Summing up, it should be noted that the works mentioned above do not just have historical value, they imprinted very important moments of the development of civilizations. It's not for nothing that these works are still studied in schools and universities, everyone has heard about them, because the epic novel is a very significant phenomenon in the development of the world literature.

Influenced similar epic works and on many other spheres of art. The genre also found its reflection in the cinema. For example, "The Battle for Moscow" directed by Yuri Ozerov is a real epic. The film describes the largest confrontations of the Great Patriotic War. Genre features of cinema epic: a combination of historical authenticity, accuracy with a broad artistic generalization and romantic pathos.