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An epic poem is a lengthy narrative poem, ordinarily involving a time beyond living memory in which occurred the extraordinary doings of the extraordinary men and women who, in dealings with the gods or other superhuman forces, gave shape to the mortal universe for their descendants, the poet and their audience, to understand themselves as a people or nation.
Homer was the author of the Iliad and the Odyssey, the two epic poems that are the foundational works of ancient Greek literature.
Oral tradition, or oral lore, is a form of human communication wherein knowledge, art, ideas and cultural material is received, preserved, and transmitted orally from one generation to another. The transmission is through speech or song and may include folktales, ballads, chants, prose or verses. In this way, it is possible for a society to transmit oral history, oral literature, oral law and other knowledge across generations without a writing system, or in parallel to a writing system. Religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism, Catholicism, and Jainism, for example, have used an oral tradition, in parallel to a writing system, to transmit their canonical scriptures, rituals, hymns and mythologies from one generation to the next.
Serb epic poetry is a form of epic poetry created by Serbs originating in today's Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and North Macedonia. The main cycles were composed by unknown Serb authors between the 14th and 19th centuries. They are largely concerned with historical events and personages. The instrument accompanying the epic poetry is the gusle.
The gusle or lahuta is a single-stringed musical instrument traditionally used in the Dinarides region of Southeastern Europe. The instrument is always accompanied by singing; musical folklore, specifically epic poetry.
The Epic of Manas is a traditional epic poem dating to the 18th century but claimed by the Kyrgyz people to be much older. The plot of Manas revolves around a series of events that coincide with the history of the region in the 9th century, primarily the interaction of the Kyrgyz people with Turkic and Chinese people
The folklore of India encompasses the folklore of the nation of India and the Indian subcontinent. India is an ethnically and religiously diverse country. Given this diversity, it is difficult to generalize widely about the folklore of India as a unit.
Yukar 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 "Ainu Mosir", or the land of the humans, resting on the back of a fish whose movements cause earthquakes.
Ainu music is the musical tradition of the Ainu people of northern Japan.
Chief Daniel Orowole Olorunfẹmi Fagunwa MBE, popularly known as D. O. Fagunwa, was a Nigerian Yoruba author who pioneered the Yoruba-language novel.
Frithiof's Saga is a legendary saga from Iceland which in its present form is from ca. 1300. It is a continuation from The Saga of Thorstein Víkingsson. It takes place principally in Norway during the 8th century.
The Homeric Question concerns the doubts and consequent debate over the identity of Homer, the authorship of the Iliad and Odyssey, and their historicity. The subject has its roots in classical antiquity and the scholarship of the Hellenistic period, but has flourished among Homeric scholars of the 19th and 20th centuries.
Poetry as an art form predates written text. The earliest poetry is believed to have been recited or sung, employed as a way of remembering oral history, genealogy, and law. Poetry is often closely related to musical traditions, and the earliest poetry exists in the form of hymns, and other types of song such as chants. As such poetry is a verbal art. Many of the poems surviving from the ancient world are recorded prayers, or stories about religious subject matter, but they also include historical accounts, instructions for everyday activities, love songs, and fiction. Many scholars, particularly those researching the Homeric tradition and the oral epics of the Balkans, suggest that early writing shows clear traces of older oral traditions, including the use of repeated phrases as building blocks in larger poetic units. A rhythmic and repetitious form would make a long story easier to remember and retell, before writing was available as a reminder. Thus many ancient works, from the Vedas to the Odyssey, appear to have been composed in poetic form to aid memorization and oral transmission, in prehistoric and ancient societies. Poetry appears among the earliest records of most literate cultures, with poetic fragments found on early monoliths, runestones and stelae.
Olonkho is a series of heroic epic tales of the Yakuts and one of the oldest epic arts of the Turkic peoples. The term refers to the entire Sakha epic tradition as well as its central epic.
Al-Sirah al-Hilaliyyah, also known as the Sirat Bani Hilal and the al-Hilali epic, is an Arabic epic oral poem that recounts the tale of the journey of the Bedouin tribe of the Banu Hilal from Najd in Arabia to Tunisia and Algeria via Egypt. It is built around historical events that took place in the 11th century. The Banu Hilal were dominant in central North Africa for over a century before their annihilation by the Almohads of Morocco. The epic is folkloric and oral, not having been committed to writing until relatively recent times, and doesn't have a well-defined date of creation. Of the dozen odd major oral epic poems that developed within the Arab folk tradition between the Middle Ages and the 19th century, Sirat Bani Hilal is today the only one that is still performed in its integral musical form. The longest notable version contains 1,000,000 lines, the poet could sing this version about 100 hours. The epic, once widespread throughout the Middle East, is today performed only in Egypt. In 2008 it was inscribed on UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Isidore Okpewho, NNOM, was a Nigerian novelist and critic. He won the 1976 African Arts Prize for Literature, and the 1993 Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best Book Africa.
Germanic heroic legend is the heroic literary tradition of the Germanic-speaking peoples, most of which originates or is set in the so-called Migration Period. Stories from this time period, to which others were added later, were transmitted orally, traveled widely among the Germanic speaking peoples, and were known in many variants. These legends typically reworked historical events or personages in the manner of oral poetry, forming a heroic age. Heroes in these legends often display a heroic ethos emphasizing honor, glory, and loyalty above other concerns. Like Germanic mythology, heroic legend is a genre of Germanic folklore.
Darangen is a Maranao epic poem from the Lake Lanao region of Mindanao, Philippines. It consists of 17 cycles with 72,000 lines in iambic tetrameter or catalectic trochaic tetrameter. Each cycle pertains to a different self-contained story. The most notable of which deals with the exploits of the hero Bantugan.
In Mansi folklore, the Menk is a forest spirit of Khanty and Mansi mythology. The Mansi are an indigenous people living in Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Russia.
Epic poetry, or tuuli in Mongolian, is an important genre of Mongol oral literature. The two most well-known epics are the Jangar and the Geser. These tuuli are commonly sung with instruments such as the Morin khuur and the Tovshuur (lute). Most epics deal with topics of the history of the Mongols, their ideal worlds and heroes, and the acquisition of new lands. Epics are performed mostly as celebrations or during important events. Mongol epic poetry has, as of 2009, been on the UNESCO List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding.
References
- Okpewho, Isidore. 2014. Blood on the Tides: The Ozidi Saga and Oral Epic Narratology. Rochester: University of Rochester Press. 279 pages. ISBN 978-1580464871
- Okpewho, Isidore. The Art of The Ozidi Saga. Research in African Literatures Volume 34, Number 3.
- Clark-Bekederemo J. P. (trans.) The Ozidi Saga. Howard University Press 1991 ISBN 0-88258-108-2.