Epic poetry

lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily detailing heroic deeds

thumb|Achilles during the [[Trojan War, as depicted in an ancient Greek polychromatic pottery painting (dating to ).]] thumb|upright|Joan of Arc is considered a medieval Christian heroine of France for her role in the [[Hundred Years' War, and was canonized as a Roman Catholic saint]] thumb|upright|William Tell, a popular [[folk hero of Switzerland.]] thumb|upright|Giuseppe Garibaldi, celebrated as one of the greatest generals of modern times, is considered an Italian national hero for his role in the [[Italian unification, and is known as the "Hero of the Two Worlds" because of his military e

medieval narrative in poetic form

thumb| Dobrynya Nikitich rescues Zabava Putyatichna from the dragon Gorynych, by [[Ivan Bilibin (1941)]]

body of Indic literature

thumb|Ashik Ağalar Mikayılov playing the saz thumb|Ashugh Jivani (center, playing the kamani) with instrumentalists right|200px|thumbnail|Soviet Union|Soviet stamp from 1962 devoted to [[Sayat-Nova's 250 anniversary]]

Olonkho (, ; ; ) is a series of Yakut and Dolgan heroic epics. The term Olonkho is used to refer to the entire Yakut epic tradition as well as individual epic poems. An ancient oral tradition, it is thought that many of the poems predate the northwards migration of Yakuts in the 14th century, making Olonkho among the oldest epic arts of any Turkic peoples. There are over one hundred recorded Olonkhos, varying in length from a few thousand to tens of thousands of verses, with the most well-known poem Nyurgun Bootur the Swift containing over 36,000 verses.

epic poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

In Hinduism, Itihasa-Purana, also called the fifth Veda, refers to the traditional accounts of cosmogeny, myths, royal genealogies of the lunar dynasty and solar dynasty, and legendary past events, as narrated in the Itihasa (Mahabharata and the Ramayana) and the Puranas. They are highly influential in Indian culture, and many classical Indian poets derive the plots of their poetry and drama from the Itihasa. The Epic-Puranic chronology derived from the Itihasa-Purana is an influential frame of reference in traditional Indian thought.

sung epic poem originating in Ukraine

thumb|upright=1.34|Odysseus consults the soul of the prophet [[Tiresias in his katabasis during Book 11 of The Odyssey.]]

verse form created by Edmund Spenser

'''''' () are Ainu sagas that form a long rich tradition of oral literature. In older periods, the epics were performed by both men and women; during the 19th and early 20th centuries, when Ainu culture was in decline, women were generally the most skillful performers. Traditional tales describe floating worlds with , or the land of the humans (as opposed to , the land of the gods), resting on the back of a fish whose movements cause earthquakes.

form of epic poetry

epic poetry of the Indian subcontinent

Albanian legendary epic poetry

A laisse is a type of stanza, of varying length, found in medieval French literature, specifically medieval French epic poetry (the chanson de geste), such as The Song of Roland. In early works, each laisse was made up of (mono) assonanced verses, although the appearance of (mono) rhymed laisses was increasingly common in later poems. Within a poem, the length of each separate laisse is variable (whereas the metric length of the verses is invariable, each verse having the same syllable length, typically decasyllables or, occasionally, alexandrines).

Mongolian oral tradition comprising heroic epics

heroic literary traditions of the Germanic-speaking peoples

Wikimedia list article

epic poetry and epic fantasy in Arabic literature