Explores how artists in the past three centuries, working in varied forms and media, have aimed for the previously unattempted in epic creation.

Epic Ambitions in Modern Times explores how artists in varied genres and media have aimed for, in Milton’s phrase, ”things unattempted yet” in epic creation. Starting with the last books of Paradise Lostas a farewell to the ancient tradition of epic and extending to an assessment of four twenty-first-century women writers retelling canonical epics in the voices of marginalized characters, the book’s intervening chapters consider epic in the forms of an epistolary novel, a work of history, a poetic autobiography, an opera, a silent film, a series of paintings, two literary fantasies, three poems set in the future and a play.