Heroic Poetry Quotes

Heroic poetry has ever been esteemed the greatest work of human nature.

To encounter 'Beowulf' is like taking a sledgehammer to a quarry face. You must bang in there.

There are certain functions that a writer has to do. In a time of crisis, it is great to have heroic poems, as it was in the Irish Revolution. It's great to have great songs, because people need something to sing when they are marching. That's OK, but it should be on the side. It's not the ultimate thing.

[Beowolf] is considered an epic because of its long speeches, its digressions, its repetition, and its being required.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

With several different kinds of poetry to choose from, a man would decide that he would like best to be an epic poet, and he would set out, in conscious determination, on an epic poem.

In a way, Anglo-Saxon poetry cannot be translated.

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.

I wish that the people who sing about the deeds of heroes would think about the people who have to clear up after them.

The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else of the same name.