Epics from Dante Alighieri’s Divine Comedy (1320) to Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590) borrowed from the traditions of ancient poets, shifting the genre for a new audience in a new world using the conventions that were regaining popularity at the time.(4) The renewed interest in antiquity normalized Greek and Latin literary traditions, which stabilized the relevance and conventions of the genre through the following centuries.

Homeric epics were composed in dactylic hexameter, which set a precedent for later Greek and Latin oral poetry.(3)Ĭlassical literary traditions remained popular in Europe with the influence of the Renaissance.

Before they were formally recorded, they were composed and performed orally in front of an audience, which bards would accommodate by adapting and extending the stories. The two well-known epics tell the stories of events during and after Trojan War. The Homeric epics the Iliad and the Odyssey were first composed in Archaic Greece (circa 700-480 BC). These features continue to appear in storytelling throughout history and in modern literature, film, and video games.(2) The early poem is regarded for introducing many of the characteristic elements of epic as a genre. The narrative is written in Sumerian cuneiform on stone tablets that date to circa 2000 BC. The Epic of Gilgamesh, based on the king of Uruk, is recognized as the world’s first epic poem, and perhaps the oldest written story. The wall of what would surely have been a drab multi-storey car park in Porto, Northern Portugal is enlivened by this cheerful and skilfully executed mural.The eleventh tablet of The Epic of Gilgamesh, which tells the story of a flood. In addition to the charm of this hand painted sign I love the dichotomy between the method of manufacture (handmade, improvised) and the supposed official nature of the message (authorised parking). Spanish water hydrantĪ certain type of civic pride is required to turn something as prosaic as the cover for a water hydrant into a thing of beauty. The mosaics which decorate the walls seem to have been created from random pieces of broken pottery but at the same time there is a powerful unity to the whole creation. Park GüellĪntoni Gaudi and Barcelona are inextricably linked and the Park Güell which overlooks the city is one of the most exuberant expressions of his artistic genius. I discovered this bench while walking round the mediaeval city of Segovia in central Spain. I was attracted as much by the incongruity of its location as the stylishness of the design. It is by far the most thumbed cookery book I own – on its last legs really – but I can't quite bring myself to replace this copy. It managed to be at once not only exotic but also practical and I knew I had to have one. Elizabeth David’s ‘French Provincial Cooking’Ī girl in the student flat that I was in at college had a copy of this book and I was impressed. In the town of Pézenas in southern France I came across a street of houses identified with cast metal numbers such as the one shown here. The combination of a few simple design elements and the use of appropriate materials add enormous style to an everyday artefact. The combination of these diverse but beautifully constructed elements more than makes its mark in a city that has no shortage of distinguished buildings. On the house next to it, there is a green wall designed by French botanist Patrick Blanc. It combines an old abandoned electrical station with newly constructed floors encased with oxidized cast-iron. This museum and cultural centre was designed by the Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron.

Define muse of poetry