Table of Contents

Preface; 1. The Epic of Gilgamesh A. R. George; 2. Greek epic Jasper Griffin; 3. Roman epic Peter Toohey; 4. Heroic epic poetry in the Middle Ages Karl Reichl; 5. Dante and the epic of transcendence John Freccero; 6. Italian Renaissance epic Giuseppe Mazzotta; 7. Camões's Os Lusíadas: the first modern epic George Monteiro; 8. The Faerie Queene: Britain's national monument Catherine Bates; 9. The seventeenth-century Protestant English epic David Loewenstein; 10. Mock-heroic and English poetry Claude Rawson; 11. Romantic re-appropriations of the epic Michael O'Neill; 12. Ezra Pound, T. S. Eliot and the modern epic John Whittier-Ferguson; 13. Derek Walcott's Omeros Robert Hamner; 14. Epic in translation Paul Merchant.

Promotional Information

This Companion surveys over four thousand years of epic poetry in a series of accessible essays.

About the Author

Catherine Bates is Reader in Renaissance Literature at the University of Warwick.