E X T E N S I O N EPIC POETRY As we said in the Presentation, Beowulf is an epic poem. This means that it has certain characteristics in common with other poems, which developed in different countries in Europe and Asia over a very long period. First of all, let us say that poetry is the most ancient literary genre. It began as an oral form and was often accompanied by music. It was transmitted orally from generation to generation and only much later was written down. Epic poetry is a particular type of poetry. An epic poem can be described as a long-verse narrative that tells about heroic deeds and memorable events, always involving fighting of some sort. It contains the supernatural element because the characters often interact with gods or magical creatures. It can originate from a collective, anonymous body of legends and stories or can be the work of a single poet. The protagonists are individual heroes, who may be human or superhuman, but the events in which they take part affect1 whole communities or peoples; those events may derive from real historical facts or from myth, or from both. The language is elevated. It often includes epithets2 and formal speeches. Some examples The oldest known work of literature is an epic poem written down about 4,000 years ago in ancient Mesopotamia, The Epic of Gilgamesh (c. 2100 BCE), which tells about the deeds and adventures of Gilgamesh. He was a real Assyrian king but is treated in the poem as a demi-god, that is, a mythical figure. It originated as a series of Sumerian legends and poems in cuneiform3 script, which were later united into a single poem. Gilgamesh. 1. affect: influence. 2. epithet: a word or phrase used to describe a person, often instead of the name itself, e.g. Richard the Lionheart. 3. cuneiform: a form of writing used in the ancient countries of Mesopotamia and Persia. The characters have the shape of a wedge. 20