With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things; the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
The world knows of a vast stock of epic material scattered up and down the nations; sometimes its artistic value is as extraordinary as its archaeological interest, but not always. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
No poet will ever take the written word as a substitute for the spoken word; he knows that it is on the spoken word, and the spoken word only, that his art is founded. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
The first epics were intended for recitation; the literary epic is meant to be read. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
The epic poet has behind him a tradition of matter and a tradition of style; and that is what every other poet has behind him too; only, for the epic poet, tradition is rather narrower, rather more strictly compelling. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
The epic poet collaborates with the spirit of his time in the composition of his work. That is, if he is successful; the time may refuse to work with him, but he may not refuse to work with his time. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
The Border Ballads, for instance, and the Robin Hood Ballads, clearly suppose a state of society which is nothing but a very circumscribed and not very important heroic age. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote
That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been. Lascelles Abercrombie Read Quote