A long narrative poem describing a heroic legend or a major historical event. Epic is a solemn literary genre, and its content is folklore or a long narrative poem praising heroic achievements. The topics it involves can include historical events, ethnic and religious legends.

Epic is an ancient narrative poem, which narrates the legend of heroes or major historical events. Based on ancient heroic songs, they are collectively composed and created, reflecting historical events or myths and legends of great significance in human childhood. Epic is the earliest spiritual product of mankind, which is of great significance to our understanding of early human society.

Epic has a natural connection with ancient myths and legends. Epic is produced on the basis of mythical world outlook, and its development is ultimately a denial of mythical thought.

The forgotten epic of Babylon. China's Biography of King Gesar, Indian Mahabharata and Ramayana, and ancient Greek Heriat and Odyssey are all famous epics.

The introduction of western epics

It was foreign missionaries who first introduced western epics to China. /kloc-In the late 9th century, with the expansion of foreign powers' aggressive rights and interests after the Second Opium War, foreign missionaries gained the privilege of preaching freely in the mainland. They have introduced ancient Greek epics in their own newspapers and periodicals, such as Liuhe Congtan, Universal Newspaper and Lu Wenjian.

In the Chinese translation of this period, people often use the term "poetic history" to refer to two heroic poems of Homer in ancient Greece. It should be said that the missionaries gave a relatively accurate introduction to the main aspects of Homer's epic, such as its generation time, author, content and its position in the history of literature. In China, the Chinese equivalents of the word epic are poems about historical events, poems about history, epics and story poems.