Heroic Epic and Saga: An Introduction to the World's Great Folk Epics

This collection grew out of a series of lectures given within the framework of a course at Indiana University in 1972 and 1975. Several of us, who had done research in heroic epics, pooled our efforts for a survey of epics around the world. The lecturers wrote up their lectures, expanded them, and included footnotes and bibliography for further study. The collection thus obtained was supplemented with surveys of other significant epics by experts outside the University.

Heroic epics and sagas have enthralled two entirely separate audiences, one of listeners at the time of their oral performance and, much later, one of readers in modern European languages. The appeal in the first instance is tribalistic, or nationalistic, as the listeners identify with a hero of their blood, cast in their mold, and in the second is universalistic, as Western readers respond to the adventures of a champion. So the heroic epic and saga have passed from spoken, sung, and recited renditions into the pages of literature, and in so doing have created a tangle of problems for oral-literary scholars