The Epic: an Essay

By Lascelles Abercrombie



1914.



By the same Author:


Towards a Theory of Art
Speculative Dialogues
Four Short Plays
Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study
Principles of English Prosody




PREFACE

_As this essay is disposed to consider epic poetry as a species of
literature, and not as a department of sociology or archaeology or
ethnology, the reader will not find it anything material to the
discussion which may be typified in those very interesting works,
Gilbert Murray's "The Rise of the Greek Epic" and Andrew Lang's "The
World of Homer." The distinction between a literary and a scientific