Epic Ambitions in Modern Times

Epic Ambitions in Modern Times explores how artists in varied genres and media have aimed for, in Milton's phrase, "e;things unattempted yet"e; in epic creation. Starting with the last books of Paradise Lostas a farewell to the ancient tradition of epic and extending to an assessment of four twenty-first-century women writers retelling canonical epics in the voices of marginalized characters, the book's intervening chapters consider epic in the forms of an epistolary novel, a work of history, a poetic autobiography, an opera, a silent film, a series of paintings, two literary fantasies, three poems set in the future and a play.