On the possibility of epic poetry in our time

Well, a grandoise subject requires a grandoise subject line...I seem to recall that literary critics have something of a consensus that an epic poetry consumable by the masses is nowadays impossible...Epics whether folk-like in origin, like Homer's, or artificial, like VIrgil's, all tend to be about the encapusulation and expression of a tribe, a people or a nation's origin--there's not too many great ones and most are not read by the masses, whether artificial or folkish in origin.  But maybe the bar for a reasonable popularity for the epic has been set too high.

I would surmise that at any given time, Homer's audience, whether consuming aurally or ocularly, was never more than a few thousand at the most--and the total number of Greeks in Homer's era and for several centuries thereafter was at the very most in the low millions.  If memory serves, Athens at its height never had more than 300,000 souls. Or maybe it was 100,000.  (I dwell on Homer because his work seems to be the gold standard for what constitutes a great epic poem)

These days, the overwhelming majority of nations & peoples have already been founded for a while and most have already got their national literary touchstone in place & mostly unread by most, except them as likes Litrachoor, as Michael Caine puts in EDUCATING RITA. 
 
But there's this notion in anthropology and sociology called something like "imaginary community" or "imagined community"--it's similar to the thing that makes people who are at most 1/16th (or maybe no nth at all) Irish wear green on St. Patrick's Day.  And I submit there's something a little imaginary about nationalism and ethnicity in the first place.  It's all largely in the head.  Doesn't mean it doesn't have real effects in the real world.  But the notion of "imaginary community"  also opens up limitless possibiilty for the assemblage of a "community."   And some have argued that the creation of one of those primordial epics is what creates a people or community in the first place...(I apologize for using that "some have said..." trope--it's the kind of crappy thing that Fox News does, but I feel somewhat free to use it because here I'm freely admitting I lack any depth of knowledge about which I speak...I'm spinning stuff off the top
of my head). 
 
Given what I've said so far, I think it is very interesting that so many works of modern fantasy are truly epic in scope.  People like Terry Goodkind & Terry Brooks (to name only two of many) regularly churn out these doorstopper tomes and people buy them in pretty damn good quantity...That's not the same thing as a poem you say, well, no if you define poem in terms of rhyme and meter, but a good many of the aforementioned fantasy books use a certain elevated language, formulaic tropes and set speeches...And apart from the book-buyers, there's the moviegoers.   Watching the Rings trilogy in the theater, I had to shuck myself of the modern impatience with the set speeches and high style carried over into the screen version (I confess:  I have only actually read one, maybe two of the Ring books & I can't even remember which...) but I got over it, & was eventually entralled.  Maybe it was the special effects you say.  Well, possibly so, but any
original auditor of Homeric recitation did not need the assistance of special effects to block out mundane images of an urban environment in order to make the scenes come alive.  This hypothetical auditor could easily conjure up an immediate perception of what a "wine-dark" sea was without the intervention of Hollywood. 
 
Anyway, with the advent of the internet, I like to think that there is a number of incipient world-wide communities out thee awaiting their epos to bind them all together.  What language or languages will the bard(s) use.  Dunno.  A question for another day. 
 
R.
 

 
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