An epic is not made by piecing together a set of heroic lays, adjusting their discrepancies and making them into a continuous narrative.

By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.

If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.

Epic poetry exhibits life in some great symbolic attitude. It cannot strictly be said to symbolize life itself, but always some manner of life.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.