/lit/ - Literature

>>16807835
because the world changed

>>16807835
Bcs we have no sense nor love of the heroic any more.

>>16807965
Is this really how it ends? Are there really no people who would appreciate an unironic epic if it were made today?

no one writes poetry for one thing

It just changed format

Marvel movies are modern epics

>>16807850
For the worse.

>>16808003
When did poetry begin to be seen as feminine? Writing poetry was considered manly once. Now it’s mostly young girls writing shitty poetry.

To love him
is something
I hold highly
suspicious.

Like having something
so very delicious---
then being told
to do the dishes.
By Lang Leav

>>16807835
Cause prosefags took over.

Seen as too old fashioned. It's like building a Victorian style mansion in 2020; it's going to be a poor modern imitation of the real thing which was made at a certain time and place.

>>16807835
Isn't pale fire written like an epic poem?

>>16808207
It’s not considered epic though.

I think the last true epic might have been Alfred Tennyson’s idylls of the King, which is about King Arthur. It’s not as popular as other epics though.

>>16808007
>Marvel movies are modern epics

>>16808246
Why? Epic poem just indicates the structure, not the subject

>>16808420
no it demands also a high subject - both the form and the matter follow from the key principle of objectivity

>>16807835
It kept degenerating in the name of "progress" and then, much like visual art, it fell apart.

Why do you think he destroyed all future competition? I'm reading another biography of his now (by Lewalski) and have read his works, yet the impression I receive is contrary to your sentiment. The question would be more justified if it regarded the Fairy Queen.

>>16808202
>proceeds to build another black cube
Yep, sounds about right.

>>16809156
Because there hasn’t be any popular epic poem since Milton. It’s going to be nearly 400 years.
And Spenser came before Milton.

>>16809226
Yes, indeed, no other popular epic poem came after him, yet judging all these matters on popularity, whether aristocratic or plebian, isn't good for Milton himself, as his poem never achieved the popularity of Homer's epics, Virgil's Aeneid, Dante's Comedy, or even Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde (The Tales might be a better match, although they're not of epic quality). Milton never garnered any form of lesser popularity too, and if he did it was usually within England (The Romantics). So that's why I doubt the claim of him ever being popular in all spheres. The absence of better epics in the proceeding centuries is explained by the ever-going desire to make new forms of poetry, treating all of the older forms as simply forms - nothing else. When such an attitude takes reign among the popular poets, an excellent epic becomes difficult to conceive. By the way, the next popular epic after the Aeneid was technically the comedy, which came over 1300 years later.

>>16809292
But Milton was extremely popular until the decline of religion in the 20th century and then everyone thought he was too religious to be cool anymore. Everyone still quotes Milton’s paradise lost
> Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.
> A mind not to be changed by place or time. The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heav'n.

>>16808202
You could build a Victorian mansion exactly how they made them back then if you wanted, it's not like it's esoteric knowledge.

>>16809292
The layperson is much more likely to have heard of Paradise Lost than Troilus and Criseyde

I will write an American Epic about Donald trump

>>16807965
The most popular movie franchise of the century is literally about superheroes

>>16810922
They are typically superficial or poor in execution. They also tend to employ some level of snark or irony.

>>16807835
I would write an epic poem set in the present day (as in actually detailing what is happening right now) about the antichrist but I can't write poetry for shit so instead its going to be prose, sorry.

>>16807835
There's a lot of research into oral epics of under-exposed literary traditions in Africa and Europe recently. I read a good book with source texts on the epics of the Ob and Ugric people. Feel like those would be popular, lots of military heroes reaching apotheosis into sun deities.

Besides that, the Modernists were really keen on writing epics. Whitman before them, but then Zukofsky, Pound, W C Williams, Jones, Olsen, ect. After them you have people like Merrill and Nitsch trying their hand at it. Should look into those, some are absolute bangers.

>>16808924
no, its a poetic form

>>16808007
Not even in reddit would you find a post like this.

>>16807835
I am :)

>>16808008
faggot

>>16807835
We do it's called rap music. it's also a lot more entertaining than the ramblings of some stuffy pompous aristocrat

I'm writing narrative poetry in an epic style right now.

Or, rather, I'm writing a big work, a long story told in a series of stories, some of which is in prose, some of which is in verse.

>>16807835
Honestly i find that Milton gets mixed reviews amongst most people. Either they love it or they hate it. That sort of style is quite easily satirised, which i think causes styles to die out. The rape of the lock is a good idea of what i mean.

>>16807835
Here's the Spenglerian answer. It was an art form that actualized its potential completely and there was nothing else to be done. So people moved on to other things. Think about Academic Art for example. It had its period of greatness, and then gradually waned in popularity because there was nothing more you could accomplish. And it just became pastiche and people became weary of seeing the same old iterations of Venus all the time. We have now approached that stage in cinema. All the good stuff has been done already, so studios just put out capeshit movie #233 or remake #556 and compensate for the lack of originality with grandiosity and pretentiousness.

>>16811801
John Milton wasn’t an aristocrat. He was middle class.

>>16811988
People in the 18th century were already complaining that they found Milton difficult to understand because there’s just too much references.

I imagine more people would read him if he had written in another language and got translated in modern times to English.

>>16810408
>But Milton was extremely popular until the decline of religion in the 20th century
But are you thinking in terms of the English speaking world or the west in general? To my knowledge, Milton has always been well known to Anglopohones but never made a big impact on other literary traditions.

>>16812074
I read that one of the reasons that art got all weird like picasso was because of the invention of the camera. Realism in art was no longer anything special when you have photography.

>>16812183
I heard him mentioned once while watching a popular Korean movie, so that’s something.

>>16807835
Short form verses (hip-hop) are more powerful.

>>16812192
It's an enticing theory, but you see this repeat in other art forms as well. Things just either die out or exist in a state of petrification.

>>16810408
There is a documentary on YouTube about Paradise Lost and the host goes around London, I think, and asks random strangers whether they know about John Milton and Paradise Lost. If you take Milton's popularity as whether people read him at home at some point, then he is quite well known. I'm still not sure where he was popular until the 20th century.

>>16812192
Modern art was just the US forcing its "culture" on other countries to prove they were better than the Russians. With propaganda you can achieve literally anything. Tell the plebs enough times from a position of authority that the Sun is actually a giant pancake in the sky and people WILL believe it eventually.

I love Paradise Lost, is Paradise Regained worth reading?

>>16811311
>Our heroes are hyperbolic reflections of ourselves!
>WAHHH WAHHH BABY WAHHHH I WANT MOMMY MILKY WAHHH WAHHH