To do this, he takes some great story
which has been absorbed into the prevailing consciousness of his people.
As a rule, though not quite invariably, the story will be of things
which are, or seem, so far back in the past, that anything may credibly
happen in it; so imagination has its freedom, and so significance is
displayed. But quite invariably, the materials of the story will have an
unmistakable air of actuality; that is, they come profoundly out of
human experience, whether they declare legendary heroism, as in Homer
and Virgil, or myth, as in _Beowulf_ and _Paradise Lost_, or actual
history, as in Lucan and Camoens and Tasso. And he sets out this story
and its significance in poetry as lofty and as elaborate as he can
compass. That, roughly, is what we see the epic poets doing, whether
they be "literary" or "authentic"; and if this can be agreed on, we
should now have come tolerably close to a definition of epic poetry.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 4: From the version of the Marquise de Sainte-Aulaire.]
III.
THE NATURE OF EPIC
Rigid definitions in literature are, however, dangerous. At bottom, it
is what we feel, not what we think, that makes us put certain poems
together and apart from others; and feelings cannot be defined, but only
related. If we define a poem, we say what we think about it; and that
may not sufficiently imply the essential thing the poem does for us.
Hence the definition is liable either to be too strict, or to admit work
which does not properly satisfy the criterion of feeling.
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