Criticism > Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism > The Parnassian Movement - Parnassians And Epic Form

1. Printable Version
2. Download PDF
3. Cite this Page
4. Tweet This

PARNASSIANS AND EPIC FORM

Herbert J. Hunt (essay date 1941)

SOURCE: "The General Contribution of Le Parnasse," in The Epic in Nineteenth-Century France: A Study in Heroic and Humanitarian Poetry from Les Martyrs to Les Siècles Morts, Basil Blackwell, 1941, pp. 367-401.

[In the following excerpt, Hunt details the contributions of several Parnassian poets to the development of the epic form in nineteenth-century French literature.]

There are few indeed among both greater and lesser Parnassians who did not at some time or other try their hand at pastiche epic. In fact, we might reasonably call it the characteristic form of a large group of poets whose set purpose it was to eschew the more fluid kinds of composition as too readily lending themselves to sentimental laxity and personal self-abandon. As a compensation for the self-restraint imposed upon them by the choice of episodic narratives, even when they conceived of them...

Join eNotes

The above is a free excerpt. Get total access to this content with the:

eNotes Pass

1. Introduction
2. Representative Works
3. Overviews
4. Parnassians And Epic Form
5. Parnassianism And Positivism
6. Further Reading
7. Copyright