In literary usage, the term encompasses both oral and written compositions. Long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds, although the term has also been loosely used to describe novels, such as Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace, and motion pictures, such as Sergey Eisenstein’s Ivan the Terrible. Since the question cites Britannica in support of the claim that War and Peace is an epic, let us look at the beginning of that Britannica article: Applying the descriptor "epic" to novels is a relatively recent phenomenon in the history of literature. The obvious reason why War and Peace is usually described as a novel and not as an epic is that verse is one of the defining characteristics of the epic. Now, why is War and Peace not called an epic in the strict sense of literature? In what respects does it not qualify as an epic and why are those merits only attributed to older works? War and Peace is "not a novel, even less is it a poem, and still less a historical chronicle.” He read all the standard histories available in Russian and French about the Napoleonic Wars and had read letters, journals, autobiographies and biographies of Napoleon and other key players of that era.īritannica has to say this on the general characteristics of an epic:Īn epic may deal with such various subjects as myths, heroic legends, histories, edifying religious tales, animal stories, or philosophical or moral theories.Īnd according to my perspective Tolstoy’s War and Peace have almost all those subjects which are mentioned above. The novel is set 60 years before Tolstoy's day, but he had spoken with people who lived through the 1812 French invasion of Russia. More than 200 of them are real historical figures put to life on the pages of Tolstoy’s novel. The plot of War and Peace involves more than 500 characters.
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