One fascinating question about modern culture and society is the reason for its lack of interest in epic poetry, to the point where it has become impossible to compose new works in it that will be taken seriously. This especially considering that in other ages and cultures epic poetry has often been the primary form of literature, both oral and written, and almost never an insignificant one.
Nowadays it seems strange that in past ages people would often eschew prose, expecting to express their ideas better and elicit more interest through poetry. Lucretius’s De rerum natura is probably the best known example. The last major examples in Western philosophical literature I can think of are the poetic parts of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and perhaps also some poets from three or so generations ago like T.S. Eliot.
Poetry can be memorized a lot more easily than prose, so it carries obvious advantages when you’re a storyteller in a largely illiterate society (or trying to learn a major part in a three-hour play on short notice). That’s at least one selection pressure in favor of the epic poetry format that wouldn’t apply in the modern world.
I don’t think it’s sufficient to fully explain the shift towards prose, though. Epic poetry was a big deal as late as the Romantic generation, when literacy was already fairly widespread. Perhaps it has to do with the shift away from teaching the classics, many of which are epic poems?
Musing about this, I have the impression that the rise of plays is simultaneous with the dying out of epic poetry. Shakespeare did both, and playwrights were respected less than poets at the time (and plays heavily censored and restricted by law), but as time passes, more playwrights and fewer epic poems, until by the 1900s, I’m hard-pressed to think of any long-form poets besides Eliot and Pound—though playwrights are still going like gangbusters with the likes of Tennessee Williams both commercially & critically popular.
One fascinating question about modern culture and society is the reason for its lack of interest in epic poetry, to the point where it has become impossible to compose new works in it that will be taken seriously. This especially considering that in other ages and cultures epic poetry has often been the primary form of literature, both oral and written, and almost never an insignificant one.
Nowadays it seems strange that in past ages people would often eschew prose, expecting to express their ideas better and elicit more interest through poetry. Lucretius’s De rerum natura is probably the best known example. The last major examples in Western philosophical literature I can think of are the poetic parts of Nietzsche’s Zarathustra, and perhaps also some poets from three or so generations ago like T.S. Eliot.
Poetry can be memorized a lot more easily than prose, so it carries obvious advantages when you’re a storyteller in a largely illiterate society (or trying to learn a major part in a three-hour play on short notice). That’s at least one selection pressure in favor of the epic poetry format that wouldn’t apply in the modern world.
I don’t think it’s sufficient to fully explain the shift towards prose, though. Epic poetry was a big deal as late as the Romantic generation, when literacy was already fairly widespread. Perhaps it has to do with the shift away from teaching the classics, many of which are epic poems?
There is, of course, Tolkien. Though he gained fame for his prose rather than for, say, ‘The lay of Earendil’
Musing about this, I have the impression that the rise of plays is simultaneous with the dying out of epic poetry. Shakespeare did both, and playwrights were respected less than poets at the time (and plays heavily censored and restricted by law), but as time passes, more playwrights and fewer epic poems, until by the 1900s, I’m hard-pressed to think of any long-form poets besides Eliot and Pound—though playwrights are still going like gangbusters with the likes of Tennessee Williams both commercially & critically popular.
Vikram Seth, The Golden Gate, a novel in verse—but it’s a very rare sort of thing.