Since it is the first work in its genre to have survived, the Iliad does not so much display the mechanics of epic poetry as define them. Epic poetry in the West was written in virtually the same form as the Iliad for at least 500 years, and the modifications that were later made tended to be minor.
Meter
English meter involves patterns of stressed and unstressed syllables. Greek meter, on the other hand, involves patterns of long and short syllables in which, as a general rule, two...
Source: Epics for Students, ©2013 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
(The entire page is 1051 words.)
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