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    From Paradise Lost to the Lord of the Rings: top 10 epics in fiction | Stephanie Sy-Quia

    Nov 10, 2021 5 minutes

    What are epics? Typically, they are defined first by their length: they are traditionally long, and poems (this being the older, oral form). They often concern male heroes fighting a good fight (against an enemy either monstrous or geopolitical), and they’re presented as a nation-building texts: think of the Iliad, the Aeneid or Beowulf.

    These are great, familiar stories, retranslated and adapted again and again. They’re some of the most famous texts in western literature. And epic has historically been a very top-down genre: nationalistic (the Aeneid), featuring heroes whose valour and virtue are validated by their high birth (King Arthur, Beowulf, even Aragorn in Lord of the Rings). I am fascinated by the nation-building aspect of epic, not to mention its masculine, martial traditions; it is something

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