- The heroes, protected by or descended from gods, perform superhuman feats in battle or in marvelous voyages, often saving or founding a nation
- Most prestigious in Western literary tradition
- Every country had to have one
- Common features
- Typically start in the middle of things
- Invocation of the muse
- Long lists and long similes
- Long formal speeches
- Katabasis
- Divine intervention in human affairs
- Relation to empire
- Homer: Trojan War
- Virgil: Aeneas’ escape from Trojan war
- Divine Comedy: struggle between Holy Roman Empire and papacy
- Jerusalem Delivered by Tasso: Christians and pagans
- Fairy Queen by Spenser: creation of British nation
- Paradise Lost by John Milton: British Civil War
- Ladder, with each inheriting and building on the one previous
- Procession of poets speak for a nation
- Writing back to
- Working with