Audiobooks online: genre "Epics", page 2

There are few modern poems of any country so perfect in their kind as the "Hermann and Dorothea" of Goethe. In clearness of characterization, in unity of tone, in the adjustment of background and foreground, in the conduct of the narrative, it conforms admirably to the strict can...

The Achilleid is the third and unfinished work by the Roman poet Publius Papinius Statius. In its introduction, it promises to present the life of the hero Achilles from his youth as a pupil under the centaur Chiron to his death at Troy. The author died however before writing mos...

This epic poem is about Alfred the Great's defense of Christian England against the pagan Viking invaders. The decisive battle is fought in sight of a white horse mark made on a hill, after which the poem is named. As the white horse mark must be continually maintained by weedi...

Beowulf was composed by an anonymous Anglo-Saxon poet. Francis Barton Gummere translates this beautiful poem. Beowulf is an epic poem. The main character, Beowulf, proves himself a hero as he battles against supernatural demons and beasts. (Summary by Tad E.)...

These are the last four Cantos of his mock epic that Byron completed in the year before his death at the age of 36 in Messolonghi, Greece, where he had gone to fight for the nationalists against the Ottoman Empire. Juan, now in England, is invited to spend the autumn with a hunti...

The First Crusade provides the backdrop for a rich tapestry of political machinations, military conflicts, martial rivalries, and love stories, some of which are complicated by differences in religion. The supernatural plays a major role in the action. Partly on this account, and...

Paradise Regained is a poem by the 17th century English poet John Milton, published in 1671. It is connected by name to his earlier and more famous epic poem Paradise Lost, with which it shares similar theological themes. Based on the Gospel of Luke's version of the Temptation...

The Ramayan(a) is an ancient Sanskrit epic. It is attributed to the Hindu sage Valmiki and forms an important part of the Hindu canon (smṛti). The Ramayana is one of the two great epics of India, the other being Mahabharata. It is the story of Rama, who emabrks on an epic journey...

Lucan's only surviving work, De Bello Civili, more generally known as the Pharsalia, is an epic poem about the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great. The title given by posterity to the poem refers to the Battle of Pharsalus, which took place in 48 BC...

The Aeneid is a Latin epic written by Virgil in the 1st century BC that tells the legendary story of Aeneas, a Trojan who traveled to Italy, where he became the ancestor of the Romans. The first six of the poem’s twelve books tell the story of Aeneas’ wanderings from Troy to Ital...

As Vergil had surpassed Homer by adapting the epic form to celebrate the origin of the author’s nation, Milton developed it yet further to recount the origin of the human race itself and, in particular, the origin of and the remedy for evil; this is what he refers to as “things u...

Virgil's Georgics are the second of the three major poetic works ascribed to the poet. It was published probably around 29 BC and, as the name suggests, the subject of the poem is agriculture. Divided into four books, it is also the shortest of Virgil's main poetry, with only 218...