Is there rhyme in an epic poem? Is the rhyme necessary?
An epic poem can rime, but doesn’t have to. In Classical times (the Greeks and the Romans) poems never rimed. So the earliest epics:- the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the AEneid – did not rime. When rime arrived in Europe (during the Dark Ages) some long narrative poems rimed (the Chanson de Roland and the Poema del Cid are two), others did not (the Beowulf does not rime). During the Renaissance there were several examples of long narrative poems which rimed (Gierusalemme Liberata, Orlando Furioso) but when John Milton published Paradise Lost in 1667 he did not use rime, and gave his poem a long preface saying that even modern epics were better without rime. Since Milton, most epic poets have eschewed rime (Klopstock and Tennyson both do) – but Pushkin’s ‘Eugene Onegin’ rimes, and so do Byron’s ‘Don Juan’ and Mickiewicz’ ‘Pan Tadeusz’. So rime is not essential for an epic poem, but a serious poet will still use it where it is appropriate. …. I notice that the poster above me thinks that e
