Heroes, Gods and the Role of Epiphany in English Epic Poetry
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This book examines how epic poetry reflects cultural values, and how, in epic poems, the heroes must meet supernatural beings to find answers to essential questions. It begins with three chapters on ancient poetry (including The Iliad and The Odyssey, the Mahabharata, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Aeneid and the Bhagavad Gita). Subsequent chapters take up the main subject of the book, examining the evolution of English epic poetry from the anonymous Old English Beowulf to Spenser's The Faerie Queen, Milton's Paradise Lost, Blake's Milton, Wordsworth's The Prelude, Barett Browning's Aurora Leigh and Derek Walcott's 1990 poem Omeros.
E.L. Risden, emeritus professor of English at St. Norbert College, lives in De Pere, Wisconsin, where he continues to write literary and movie scholarship, speculative fiction, and occasional poetry.