"My definition" of epic includes a monkey and a man with a yellow hat.

I was taught that an epic has a particular form and structure.

• (usually hero’s) narrative, typically long form and 3rd person
• invocation of the muse
• early presentation of an overarching theme
• beginning in the middle of the action
• litany of heroes/deeds
• descent into the underworld
• supernatural influence
• stock phrases or images (eg “grey eyed Athena”)

So, any type of long form story that follows those conventions qualifies for me. Illiad, Odyssey, Gilgamesh, Song of Roland, Beowulf, etc. A lot of this overlaps with Joseph Campbell’s work in my head.

Lord of the Rings and Star Wars are two modern works that jump out at me. I recently read Circe by Madelline Miller and Piranesi by Susanna Clarke, which both felt very epic to me as well.

Epic doesn’t necessarily indicate how well something is written or how large the scale is to me. It’s more like taxonomy… does it have the characteristics that would identify it as such? Does it look like an epic and sound like an epic?

Didn't immediately see this was r/books and 100% thought it was one of the software development subreddits.

Carry on.

Something vast across a number of criteria. Time covered alone is not enough. A slew of characters alone is not enough, although they need to be bigger than life. Continents crossed on their own are not enough. And at the end you have to sit back and go "Wow" because there is so much to think about.

In all honesty I find it hard to consider stories an epic, unless they are really old and still beloved. I define epics in the narrowest way possible. Gilgamesh is an epic. So is the Illiad. Orlando Furioso qualifies as well in my opinion.

Moby Dick was just a novel for me. Not even one I liked. I just miiiight be willing to add Tolkien's Legendarium if we add modern books. I never read "Gone with the Wind" and am not very tempted to ever start, so no opinion there.

I suppose, ASoIaF or the Wheel of Time can qualify due to their scope. Never liked them either, but both series have this...vastness.

Modern multi-book series with a coherent overarching plot (ie not serialized) are what I would consider epics. These are usually sci-fi, fantasy or historical fiction novels. Examples include the Malazan, Wheel of Time and Masters of Rome books.

An epic is a specific kind of long poem written in meter. None of the books you mentioned are epics. Beowulf and The Odyssey are epics.

If the story spans several decades and has a large number of character.

• big machines

• Giant animals

• lost in a big world

So the book >!"are you my mother"!<

Scope. When the story is bigger and deals with large scale events or important people.

Off the top of my head Inferno comes to mind (or the divine comedy I just like the hell section best) as you not only explore the layers of hell but the different punishments, the whys of them AND the actual people in there.

'Epic' to me suggests that Priam will be mentioned or that play with words, stereotypes, and conventional sensibllities will be used to cock a snook or that a couple knights will cry a lot & self-harm out of fleeting agony. I'

(Since you asked so nicely, Odyssey by Homer, Don Juan by Byron, The Knight in the Panther Skin by Rustaveli.)

I read a lot of fantasy so it would be hard for me to consider a one off book epic but maybe Gone with the Wind.

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It has to all boil down to a final fight between a small contender and an extraordinary opponent. It must be well-written, whether in prose or poetry. If I don’t get at least three memorable quotes, it’s not an epic. The fight has to shape the character to a good extent, and bonus points are given for the allowance of real life developments and influences. As much as I would love to handcuff Patrick Rothfuss to Brandon Sanderson to see if Brandon could get him to finish the series, I genuinely love the Name of the Wind, because as an epic, it’s one of my favorites.

It's a marketing category and it's as vague as the seller needs it to be. In its original meaning, as with the Epic of Gilgamesh, it's a telling of a generally known story (the "spoiler" idea is way off-beam, all the audience knows the plot in advance) and structured in a way that reading, recitation or singing are all ways to communicate it. So virtually no modern epics exist. (Multi-generational stories are hardly ever epics: the Iliad, Odyssey, Æneid and Epic of Gilgamesh all take place in no more than ten years).

I can only think of one story in recent decades that comes near to the classical model of an epic - Ngugi wa Thiongo's Devil on the Cross. It was the first novel ever written in Gikuyu, and since literacy in Gikuyu was so rare when it came out, storytellers took to reading it out in bars, and got paid for it. More like Homer than an audiobook.