Greek Epic Cycle

Literary/ Cultural Context Essay

Alberto Bernabé (Universidad Complutense)

Ed. by Vaios Liapis, Open University of Cyprus
The Literary Encyclopedia. WORLD HISTORY AND IDEAS: A CROSS-CULTURAL VOLUME.

Domains

Literature Topic

Dates

Date of occurrence c.700- c.100

Places

Ancient Greece (Location)

Genres and Modes

Epic

Resources

Save to Bookshelf

1. The Epic Cycle

Of all Archaic Greek epics only two poems by Homer and two by Hesiod have survived in full. However, that era saw the creation of many other poems on greatly varied topics; they survive mainly in fragments or in late prose summaries.

The so-called Epic Cycle was a series of poems on heroic themes, particularly the large sagas that surpassed the limits of local poems and were composed independently by different authors at different times and in various places. Their common aim was either to fill out the gaps left in Homeric poems or to develop

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2501 words

Citation: Bernabé, Alberto. "Greek Epic Cycle". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 25 August 2010 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/stopics.php?rec=true&UID=13865, accessed 23 November 2024.]