If Elizabeth Barrett Browning was up on that trick, Aurora Leigh is an epic:
definitely a great-grandmother of my twentieth century broken epics.
Mairead
On Mon, 19 Feb 2001, Matthew Francis wrote:
>
> By the way, I can only speak for the UK market, but I've been told that if
> you call your work a long poem or epic or whatever, publishers aren't
> interested, but if you call it a novel in verse they get quite enthusiastic.
> Craig Raine's History the Home Movie was heavily marketed here - of course,
> he's a very establishment figure, but he and Vikram Seth and others seem to
> have made the genre almost fashionable, which maybe creates a little chink
> for less well-known writers to take advantage of.
>
> Best wishes
>
> Matthew
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ali Alizadeh <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask] <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: 19 February 2001 07:07
> Subject: The epic: pros and cons
>
>
> >Dear all
> >
> >As I'm working on a PhD project which involves writing a self-styled
> >contemporary epic of sorts, I thought to perhaps generate a discussion
> >about the advantages and short-comings of this form within the group. The
> >main advantage that the epic bears over just about any other form of
> >writing is its primordial and prominent position in having shaped
> >literature as we know it. If civilisation was formed around the great
> >rivers of the middle-east, then literature came to existence as a result of
> >the flourishing powers of the ancient epics e.g. Gilgamesh, stories of
> >Innana, Mahabharatta, Illiad, etc. This historical prominence is also the
> >epic's biggest disadvantage in contemporary writing due to the 'post'
> >civilisation and anti-mythical stances of our popular/intellectual
> >cultures. While the 'hero quest' may have enjoyed a revival thanks to
> >psychoanalysis (Jung, Campbell, etc) in the past century, it has been
> >strongly dismissed by the like of Jameson, Barthes and others who see
> >mythology as a by-product of outdated modes of culture. The catch, of
> >course, is that some of today's very contemporary poets such as Derek
> >Walcott, Les Murray, Dorothy Porter, John Scott, Alan Wearne, only to name
> >a few, haven't been able to resist the ambitions and grandeurs of long
> >protagonist-driven narratives in poetry (which may or may not qualify as
> >epics) and it is these works which have attracted the most attention to
> >these writers. I'm interested in the current possibilities of the ancient
> >form, but as I subscribe to Olson's view that "form is an extension of
> >content" I wonder about the contents which are suitable for an epic
> >treatment. In times when the only way for a younger poet to make an impact
> >has been getting fairly short poems published in highly intellectual (read:
> >anti-mythical) journals, am I deluded to be investing my energies into a
> >work which can only be published as a dismembered body in a variety of
> >potentially hostile journals before seeing the light of the day as an
> >entire volume? And is there a way out of this maze?
> >
> >Ali Alizadeh
> >
>
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