Modern epics include Braveheart, Titanic, Gladiator, Atonement, Australia and Les Misérables, and a range of science-fiction films like Star Wars. The epic was very popular in cinema in the 1960s – still, Cleopatra(1963) and Doctor Zhivago(1965) are among my favourite films. With so much story to tell, the film is often long – and it is certainly lavish, with big-name stars, exquisite costumes, amazing settings, dramatic music and, usually, a big budget employed. The action happens at a pivotal time in history, often during war or some other societal crisis. Whether the epic film is historical or not, history is important. But equally, the hero/heroine can be less notable – as in Gone with the Wind – but the story, the setting, the directing, the acting: all make for a memorable epic. Still, the hero (or heroine) is core to the work: often epic protagonists are major historical characters, for example. ‘Epic’ became a style of film-making that was ambitious: think sweeping scope, vivid and important setting, inspiring spectacle, transporting viewers to another place and time. It was the work of the movies that really began the transformation of the term. For example, the Lord of the Rings books are often categorised as epic. Outside of pure academia, the word epic came to be applied to a long work (film or book) depicting heroic deeds and adventures and/or covering a long period of time. Later non-Greek works,like Milton’s Paradise Lost, have also been classed as epics under these criteria by scholars. In this sense, the most well-known epics are the Iliad and the Odyssey.

The story takes place in the past, and across a vast setting.

The hero is quite literally a hero, whose success or failure determines the fate of his people.

The tone and style are elevated, dignified.

It is a long narrative about a serious subject.

The following conventions are key to the epic:

Only back then, the word epic had different connotations.Īn epic, in the original sense, is a genre of classical Greek poetry (the word epic was coined in the16th centuryand came from the Greek epikos, from epos, meaning‘word, song’). There was a time in my life when I came across that word frequently: when I was studying literature at university. It is a word I’ve come across several times in reviews of my books, not least in The Sun newspaper’s review of my novel The Echoes of Love: ‘An epic love story that is beautifully told.’ This week, I was reading a review of my new novel, Masquerade, when a particular word jumped out at me from the page: epic.

Romantic epic definition