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Title: The Book of the Epic

Author: Helene A. Guerber

Release Date: November 8, 2004 [eBook #13983]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BOOK OF THE EPIC***

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THE BOOK OF THE EPIC

The World's Great Epics Told in Story

by

H. A. GUERBER

Author of _Myths of Greece and Rome_, _Myths of Northern Lands_,
_Legends of the Middle Ages_, etc.

With an Introduction by J. Berg Esenwein, Litt. D.

With Sixteen Illustrations from the Masters of Painting

1913

INTRODUCTION

Every now and then in our reading we come suddenly face to face with
_first_ things,--the very elemental sources beyond which no man may
go. There is a distinct satisfaction in dealing with such beginnings,
and, when they are those of literature, the sense of freshness is
nothing short of inspiring. To share the same lofty outlook, to
breathe the same high air with those who first sensed a whole era of
creative thoughts, is the next thing to being the gods' chosen medium
for those primal expressions.

All this is not to say that the epic is the oldest form of literary
expression, but it is the expression of the oldest literary ideas,
for, even when the epic is not at all primitive in form, it deals
essentially with elemental moods and ideals. Epical poetry is poetic
not because it is metrical and conformative to rhythmical
standards,--though it usually is both,--but it is poetry because of
the high sweep of its emotional outlook, the bigness of its thought,
the untamed passion of its language, and the musical flow of its
utterance.

Here, then, we have a veritable source book of the oldest ideas of the
race; but not only that--we are also led into the penetralia of the
earliest thought of many separate nations, for when the epic is
national, it is true to the earliest genius of the people whose spirit
it depicts.

To be sure, much of literature, and particularly the literature of the
epic, is t