| 释义 |
epic, a. and n.|ˈɛpɪk|
Also 6–9 epick, 7 epique, (epik).
[ad. L. epicus, a. Gr. ἐπικός, f. ἔπος word, narrative, song. Cf. Fr. épique.]
A. adj.
1. Pertaining to that species of poetical composition (see epos), represented typically by the Iliad and Odyssey, which celebrates in the form of a continuous narrative the achievements of one or more heroic personages of history or tradition.
Epic dialect: that form of the Greek language in which the epic poems were written.
1589Puttenham Arte Eng. Poet. (Arb.) 176 Harding a Poet Epick or Historicall. 1644Milton Educ. (1738) 139 Teaches what the Laws are of a true Epic Poem. 1666Dryden Ann. Mirab., Let. Sir R. Howard, The same images serve equally for the Epique Poesie, and for the Historique and Panegyrique. 1710Steele Tatler No. 106 ⁋1 Three and twenty Descriptions of the Sun-rising that might be of great Use to an Epick Poet. 1752Johnson Rambler No. 202 ⁋6 To be poor, in the epick language, is only not to command the wealth of nations. 1819Byron Juan i. cc, My poem's Epic, and is meant to be Divided in twelve books. 1841–4Emerson Ess. Poet Wks. (Bohn) I. 165 The epic poet..must drink water out of a wooden bowl. 1879B. Taylor Stud. Germ. Lit. 73 Tennyson has endeavored to imitate the old epic simplicity.
absol.a1637B. Jonson Discoveries (1641) 132 The best masters of the Epick, Homer and Virgil.
2. Such as is described in epic poetry; epic theatre, a play or plays characterized by realism and an absence of theatrical devices.
1731A. Hill Advice to Poets 35 Then, might our great, Third Edward's awful Shade..Pale, from his Tomb, in Epic Strides, advance. 1847Tennyson Princ. Prol. 219 Some great Princess, six feet high, Grand, epic, homicidal. 1935Life & Letters To-day Sept. 74 This method of theatrical presentation was dubbed by Brecht the ‘epic’ as opposed to the ‘dramatic’ style. 1957R. Hoggart Auden 15 In some of their techniques for presenting social problems and for obtaining a sense of urgent participation from the audience they seemed to have learned something from the early ‘epic theatre’ of the German Communist playwright Bertolt Brecht.
B. n.
†1. An epic poet. Obs.
a1637B. Jonson Horace's Art Poet (1640) 5 Now to like of this, lay that aside, the Epic's office is.
2. a. An epic poem.
1706A. Bedford Temple Mus. ii. 33 One of them was the Goddess of Elegies..and another of Epicks. 1789J. Campbell Eccl. & Lit. Hist. Irel. 170 (T.) He [Mr. M'Pherson] brought forward his counterfeit epicks (the alleged poems of Ossian). 1833Coleridge Table-t. 23 Oct., The Homeric epic, in which all is purely external and objective, and the poet is a mere voice. 1876Green Short Hist. viii. 583 The most popular of all English poems has been the Puritan epic of the ‘Paradise Lost’.
b. transf. A composition comparable to an epic poem.
The typical epics, the Homeric poems, the Nibelungenlied, etc., have often been regarded as embodying a nation's conception of its own past history, or of the events in that history which it finds most worthy of remembrance. Hence by some writers the phrase national epic has been applied to any imaginative work (whatever its form) which is considered to fulfil this function.
1840Carlyle Heroes (1858) 267 Schlegel has a remark on his Historical Plays, Henry Fifth and the others, which is worth remembering. He calls them a kind of National Epic. 1869Freeman Norm. Conq. (1876) III. xiv. 328 To turn from the glowing strains of the Norwegian prose epic. 1916A. Huxley Let. 19 Mar. (1969) 95, I want very much to see the Birth of a Nation, which is said to be a really great film, an epic in pictures. 1940M. Gorelik New Theatres for Old ix. 412 An ‘epic’ is a large-scale film in which the events, usually historical, take precedence over the ‘love interest’. 1957N. Frye Anat. of Crit. iv. 314 Ulysses, then, is a complete prose epic. 1965Movie Spring 36/1 The budget was supposed to have guaranteed an action-packed epic.
3. fig. A story, or series of events, worthy to form the subject of an epic.
1831Lytton Godolph. lxiii, This starry and weird incident in the epic of life's common career. 1866Motley Dutch Rep. vi. vii. 898 That life was a noble Christian epic. |