This book presents a history of the epic from the classical age to the present day. It deals not just with the well-know epics of antiquity and the Renaissance, but also pursues developments in more recent literature and film. It offers an exploration of the changes that have taken place in the genre from Homer to Hollywood.Acknowledgements Glossary Introduction: What is the Epic? The Classical Age: Beginnings The Middle Ages and Renaissance: Epic in the Christian Era The Eighteenth Century: Epic in a Modern World The Nineteenth Century: Epic and the Self The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Modernist Epic The Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries: Epic Film Further Reading IndexADELINE JOHNS-PUTRA is Lecturer in English at the University of Exeter, UK. She is the author of Heroes and Housewives: Women's Epic Poetry and Domestic Ideology in the Romantic Age (2001), and has also published articles on gender and genre in the Romantic age.