777 articles
List of characters in the Mahabharata
Characters of the Mahabharata (महाभारत), Vyasa's Sanskrit epic: the five Pandavas, hundred Kauravas, Krishna, Draupadi, Karna, Bhishma, and over 3,000 named figures, with their roles, parentage, and treatment in retellings.
List of world folk-epics
List of world folk-epics: oral and oral-derived heroic narratives such as Manas, Gesar, Mongol Tuuli, Sun-Jata, Sîrat Banî Hilal, bylyny, Siri, and Biag ni Lam-ang, their singers, textualization, and UNESCO recognition.
Lỡ bước sang ngang
Lỡ bước sang ngang is a 110-line lục bát narrative poem by the Vietnamese poet Nguyễn Bính, first printed in 1939 and a phenomenon of the Thơ mới era.
Lokgatha
Lokgatha (लोकगाथा, "folk ballad") is a sung narrative tradition of the Indian subcontinent, telling long stories in verse in the people's spoken language, transmitted orally across generations.
Lorikayan
Lorikayan (लोरिकायन), also called Loriki, is a Bhojpuri folk epic telling of the Ahir warrior Lorik and the heroine Manjari; it is the largest Bhojpuri folk epic.
Madhumalati
Madhumalati (मधुमालती, Madhumālatī) is a sixteenth-century Sufi romance in Hindavi by the poet Manjhan, composed around 1545. It tells of Prince Manohar's love for Princess Madhumalati as a spiritual path.
Magdalana Mariam
Magdalana Mariam (മഗ്ദലനമറിയം) is a Malayalam khandakavyam, a short narrative poem by Vallathol Narayana Menon written in 1921, retelling Mary Magdalene's path from sin to repentance and credited with pioneering Christian symbolism in Malayalam poetry.
Mahabharata
Mahabharata (महाभारत), also Jaya or Bharata, the major Sanskrit epic of the Kaurava-Pandava war attributed to Vyasa, over 100,000 shlokas in 18 parvas, preserved in Northern and Southern recensions and reconstructed in the BORI Critical Edition.
Mahabharatam (Kilippattu)
Mahabharatam Kilippattu is a Malayalam verse retelling of the Sanskrit Mahabharata in the parrot-song kilippattu style by Thunchaththu Ramanujan Ezhuthachan, first printed complete in 1862.
Mahajatra
Mahajatra, also known as Mahayatra, is an unfinished Odia-language epic poem by Radhanath Ray, dated 1896. A reinvention of the Mahabharata, it ranks among the major kavyas of modern Odia poetry.
Mahakavya
Mahākāvya (महाकाव्य, "great poem"; also sargabandha) is a genre of Indian epic poetry in Classical Sanskrit, a long court epic in cantos, ruled by codified requirements.
Mahapurana
Mahapurana (महापुराण) is a 10th-century Apabhramsha Jain narrative epic by Pushpadanta, composed between 959 and 965 CE, retelling the lives of the 63 shalakapurushas of Jain tradition and ending with Mahavira's nirvana.
Máj
Máj (Czech for "May") is a lyrical-epic poem by Czech Romantic poet Karel Hynek Mácha, self-published in 1836, telling a tragic story of love and betrayal and widely seen as a landmark of Czech poetry.
Malebolge
Malebolge is Dante's invented name for the eighth circle of Hell in the Inferno: ten concentric ditches (bolge) of iron-colored stone where ten classes of fraudulent sinners are punished, cantos XVIII-XXX.
Manasamangal
Manasamangal (মনসামঙ্গল), also known as Padmapuran, is a medieval Bengali narrative poem celebrating the snake goddess Manasa and her conquest of the merchant Chand Sadagar.
Manchester Odyssey
The Manchester Odyssey is a 3rd-century CE parchment codex, the earliest surviving copy of Homer's Odyssey in book form, preserving Books 12-15 and 18-24. Held at the John Rylands Library since its 1901 purchase from the 26th Earl of Crawford.
Mandodari
Mandodari (मन्दोदरी), also Mandodari of Lanka, is Ravana's chief wife and queen in Valmiki's Ramayana, mother of Meghanada, famed for her lament over Ravana and counted among the Panchakanya.
Mantıku't-Tayr
Mantıku't-Tayr (منطق الطير, "The Speech of the Birds") is a Sufi mathnawi by the Persian poet Attar, finished in 1187, in which birds journey through seven valleys to the Simurgh.
Manucharitam
Manucharitam (Telugu: మనుచరిత్రము), also called Svarochisha Manu Sambhavamu, is a sixteenth-century Telugu court epic by Allasani Peddana, chief poet of Krishnadevaraya, and is regarded as the first prabandha in Telugu literature.
Margites
Margites (Μαργίτης) is a lost ancient Greek comic poem about a fool, probably from Ionia in the 7th or 6th century BCE and attributed to Homer.
Marko Kraljević Cycle
The Marko Kraljević Cycle is a group of South Slavic epic folk songs about Kraljević Marko, a superhuman Christian champion under Ottoman rule, and a standard division of Serbian epic poetry.
Martim Cererê
Martim Cererê is a 1927 modernist narrative poem by the Brazilian writer Cassiano Ricardo, telling how the Indian, the Black, and the white form a Brazilian boy.
Martín Fierro
Martín Fierro is a two-part Argentine narrative poem by José Hernández, published in 1872 and 1879, in the gaucho's voice; canonized in 1913, it became the national poem of Argentina.
Marusia Churai
Marusia Churai is a 1979 historical novel in verse by Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko, set in 17th-century Poltava around the legendary folk singer of the same name.
Masnavi (مثنوی معنوی)
Masnavi-ye Ma'navi (مثنوی معنوی, Spiritual Couplets): six-book Persian mystical poem by Rumi (d. 1273), over 26,000 couplets, begun at Husam al-Din Chalabi's request; called the Qur'an in Persian and foundational to the Mevlevi order.
Mathura Mangala
Mathura Mangala is a revered eighteenth-century Odia devotional kavya by Bhakta Charana Das, a Gaudiya Vaishnava, centered on the theme of Radha and Krishna's love.
Matter of France
The Matter of France, also known as the Carolingian cycle, is the body of medieval legend centered on Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers defending Christianity from the Saracens.
Meghnad Badh Kavya
Meghnad Badh Kavya (মেঘনাদবধ কাব্য) is an 1861 Bengali epic poem by Michael Madhusudan Dutt, retelling the Ramayana with Ravana's son Meghnad as its central figure.
Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları
Memleketimden İnsan Manzaraları is an epic free-verse poem by the Turkish poet Nâzım Hikmet Ran, written largely in prison in the 1940s and first published in Turkey in 1966–1967.
Metamorphoses
Ovid's Metamorphoses, a 15-book Latin epic of about 12,000 hexameter lines, retells some 250 transformation myths from Chaos to Augustus and became the 'Bible for artists' of Western painting and sculpture.