Definition of "Epic"

But the absolute isolation which marks the narrative of the Bundehesh, not a trace of any analogous record being found either in the Zend-Avesta or in the Epic tradition, as collected by Firdouzi, Ḫamza, and the other writers of the Musselman epoch, is of a nature to inspire great doubts in regard to its character as a genuine Iranian legend.

1882 , François Lenormant, translated by Francis Brown, The Beginnings of History According to the Bible and the Traditions of the Oriental Peoples: From the Creation of Man to the Deluge, page 331

Egil’s Saga, I think, one cannot at present obtain at all, and the Saga of the Laxdale men I only possess in Latin. These and the rest are truly Epic narratives, the Odysseys of a ruder race than the Achæans.

1890 November, Andrew Lang, “At the Sign of the Ship”, in Longman’s Magazine, volume 17, number 97, page 107

We shall speak, therefore, of the Epic tradition as an already established fact, and we shall discuss it only from the point of view of the fifth and fourth centuries in Athens.

1919, Cecil Delisle Burns, Greek Ideals: A Study of Social Life, page 99

Every δῆμος [dêmos] had one or more towns (πόλεις [poleis]), and accordingly for the complete description of the land, usual in the Epic phraseology, both expressions are commonly united […]

1880 , Georg Friedrich Schömann, translated by E. G. Hard and J. S. Mann, The Antiquities of Greece, volume 1, page 66

The first syllable is lengthened, as the antistrophic line […] shows, an Epic scansion in accordance with the Epic phrase […]

1957, Herbert Jennings Rose, A Commentary on the Surviving Plays of Aeschylus […], page 94, note 80

It commonly signifies the indigenous religion(s) of South Asia, now increasingly called by the Epic term Sanātana Dharma (eternal religion).

2006, Encyclopedia of India, volume 2, page 188

He calls for a special kind of instrument, bearing a name which smacks of the Norse Epics—a “Nibling.”

1881, “Pekin” [Louis Kossuth Lawrie], In the C.P.; or, Sketches in Prose & in Verse, Descriptive of Scenes and Manners in the Central Provinces of India, page 180

Compare Milton’s Epics with the other great Epics of the world.

1882, “Hilary Term: Senior Sophisters—Modern Literature”, in Dublin Examination Papers […], page 12

The “Idylls of the King,” more of a complete Epic than any of the great Epics, showed how high is that aim which every commonwealth of men is bound to propose to itself; […]

a. 1902, Aubrey de Vere, “The Reception of the Early Poems”, in Hallam Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir by His Son, published 1905, page 511

The Epic has a continuous history from the Mycenaean era to the making of the Iliad.

1956, Denys L. Page, History and the Homeric Iliad, page 222

This conciliatory approach to the Gītā is a clear enough indication of its being influenced by the world of the Epics to which it belongs.

1992, Varghese Malpan, A Comparative Study of the Bhagavad-Gītā and the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola on the Process of Spiritual Liberation, page 43