EPIC TRADITIONS AND MODERN LITERATURE: CONTINUITY, TRANSFORMATION AND HYBRID FORMS

Abstract

This essay looks at how modern literature keeps, changes, and gives new uses to epic traditions. Utilizing comparative literary analysis and narratological frameworks, the research investigates the enduring presence of epic elements, including collective memory, heroic narratives, mythic temporality, and expansive plot architectures in modern novels, epic fantasy, and postcolonial literature. Classical epics offered coherent paradigms of global order and communal identity, but contemporary literature arises within a disjointed cultural milieu characterized by skepticism towards overarching narratives. Nonetheless, several books from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries reinvigorate epic structures via intertextual reference, genre hybridization, and the satirical reinterpretation of heroic conventions. The paper posits that contemporary authors reconstruct epic poetics not just as imitation, but as a method to reevaluate the interplay between individuality and community, history and myth, and truth and imagination. The conclusion emphasizes the significance of epic traditions in comprehending how contemporary literature navigates cultural memory, national narratives, and globalized popular culture.