777 articles
Basava Ragale
Basava Ragale, fully the Basavarājadevara Ragale, is a Kannada narrative poem by Harihara, the first hagiographic account of the life of the twelfth-century saint Basava.
Batrachomyomachia
Batrachomyomachia, also known by the alternate title Batrachomachia, is an ancient Greek mock-epic poem of about 300 verses describing a war between frogs and mice in Homeric style.
Beatrice Portinari
Beatrice Portinari (Bice, 1266–1290), Florentine daughter of Folco Portinari and wife of Simone de' Bardi, identified through Boccaccio and Pietro Alighieri as Dante's beloved and the guide of the Divine Comedy.
Beauty and Love
Beauty and Love (Hüsn ü Aşk) is an allegorical Sufi masnavi in Ottoman Turkish by Şeyh Galib, completed in 1783 and regarded as the last great masnavi of divan literature.
Bellum Punicum
Bellum Punicum, also spelled Bellum Poenicum, was an epic poem in Latin by Gnaeus Naevius on the First Punic War of 264 to 241 BC, surviving in about 60 fragments.
Beng ü Bade
Beng ü Bade (Bəngü-Badə) is an allegorical mathnawi of 444 couplets by the poet Fuzuli, written in Azerbaijani between 1510 and 1524, in which hashish and wine debate their superiority.
Beniowski
Beniowski is a digressive poem by the Polish Romantic poet Juliusz Słowacki, written between 1840 and 1846, inspired by Byron's Don Juan and modeled on adventurer Maurycy Beniowski.
Beowulf
Beowulf, the Old English epic of the Geatish hero who fights Grendel, Grendel's mother, and a dragon, survives only in the Nowell Codex (Cotton Vitellius A.xv, ca. 1000), burned in 1731, first printed in 1815, with composition dates debated from the seventh to eleventh century.
Beowulf (hero)
Beowulf, hero of the Old English epic poem Beowulf, is a Geatish warrior who kills Grendel and Grendel's mother and dies slaying a dragon; the 3,182-verse poem survives in one manuscript copied around 1000.
Bhaktalilamrita
Bhaktalilamrita (भक्तलीलामृत), also rendered Bhaktalilamrut, is a Marathi hagiographical poem in 51 chapters by Mahipati, completed in 1774, recounting the lives and miracles of Vaishnava saints, especially those of Maharashtra.
Bhanubhakta Ramayana
The Bhanubhakta Ramayana (भानुभक्त रामायण) is a Nepali verse rendering of the Ramayana by Bhanubhakta Acharya, Nepal's first poet, completed in 1853 and regarded as the first Nepali epic.
Bharat-Bharati
Bharat-Bharati (भारत-भारती) is a 1912 Hindi narrative poem by Maithili Sharan Gupt, divided into past, present, and future sections, whose popularity in the freedom movement led Gandhi to name Gupt Rashtrakavi.
Bharata (Ramayana)
Bharata (भरत) is Rama's brother in the Ramayana, son of Dasharatha and Kaikeyi, who refused the throne, placed Rama's sandals on it, and ruled Ayodhya as regent from Nandigrama during Rama's fourteen-year exile.
Bharata (भरत) (Mahabharata)
Bharata (भरत), son of Dushyanta and Shakuntala in the Mahabharata's Adi Parva, named 'the supported' by a celestial messenger, ancestor of the epic's Kurus and Pandavas and eponym of India's Sanskrit name, Bharata.
Bharatam Pattu
Bharatam Pattu (ഭാരതം പാട്ട്) is a Malayalam verse rendering of the Mahabharata composed by poet Ayyanappilla Asan, classifying it as a later work of the pattu school.
Bharatesha Vaibhava
Bharatesha Vaibhava (ಭರತೇಶವೈಭವ) is a sixteenth-century Kannada Jain epic by the poet Ratnakaravarni, telling the life of Bharata, eldest son of the first Tirthankara Adinatha.
Bharthari
Bharthari (भरथरी) is a folk epic of northern India telling of a king of Ujjain who renounces his throne and worldly life to become a disciple of Guru Gorakhnath.
Bhattikavya
Bhattikavya, also called Ravanavadha, is a Sanskrit mahakavya by the poet Bhatti, written around the sixth century, that retells Rama's story while illustrating Panini's grammar and Sanskrit poetics.
Bhavarth Ramayan
Bhavarth Ramayan (भावार्थ रामायण) is Sant Eknath's Marathi rendering of the Rama story, composed between 1595 and 1599 and completed after his death by his disciple Gavba.
Bhima (भीम)
Bhima (भीम), also Bhimasena or Vrikodara, is the second Pandava son of Pandu and Kunti in the Mahabharata, fathered by the wind god Vayu, famed for mace combat under Balarama, the slaying of all hundred Kaurava sons, Jarasandha, and Kichaka.
Bhishma (भीष्म)
Bhishma (भीष्म, Devavrata, Gangaputra, Pitamaha), Mahabharata patriarch: son of Shantanu and Ganga, took the terrible vow of lifelong celibacy, led the Kauravas for ten days, fell to Arjuna behind Shikhandi, died at Uttarayana after 58 nights on a bed of arrows.
Biag ni Lam-ang
Biag ni Lam-ang (Life of Lam-ang) is the Ilocano folk epic of northwestern Luzon, first published by Isabelo de los Reyes in El Ilocano (1889-1890), telling of the hero Lam-ang's birth, vengeance, courtship of Ines Kannoyan, and resurrection.
Bích Câu kỳ ngộ
Bích Câu kỳ ngộ is a Vietnamese Nôm verse romance in lục bát meter telling how the poor scholar Trần Tú Uyên meets and marries the fairy Giáng Kiều.
Bichitra Ramayana
Bichitra Ramayana (ବିଚିତ୍ର ରାମାୟଣ, "the Wonderful Ramayana") is the shared name of two Odia retellings of the Rama story, by Sarala Das and Biswanath Khuntia.
Bidagdha Chintamani
Bidagdha Chintamani (ବିଦଗ୍ଧ ଚିନ୍ତାମଣି) is an 18th-century Odia kavya by Abhimanyu Samanta Singhara, telling the love story of Radha and Krishna and counted as the longest kavya in Odia literature.
Bilanka Ramayana
Bilanka Ramayana (ବିଲଙ୍କା ରାମାୟଣ) is an Odia poetic retelling of the Ramayana, attributed to Sarala Das, in which Rama, aided by Sita, kills a thousand-headed Ravana in the subterranean city of Bilanka.
Bogatyr (богатырь)
Bogatyr (богатырь), Turkic-derived word for a hero of Russian byliny epic songs; warrior of extraordinary strength defending the Russian land. Key figures: Ilya Muromets, Dobrynya Nikitich, Alyosha Popovich.
Bovo-bukh
Bovo-bukh, also known as Bovo d'Antona, is a chivalric romance in Old Yiddish verse by Elia Levita, regarded as the first secular work written in Yiddish.
Briggflatts
Briggflatts is a five-part autobiographical long poem by the British poet Basil Bunting, published in 1966, celebrating the Northumbrian landscape and hailed as his masterpiece and a key text of British modernism.
Briseis (Βρισηΐς)
Briseis (Βρισηΐς), daughter of Brises, is Achilles' captive war prize in the Iliad, whose seizure by Agamemnon sparks the epic's quarrel; she speaks once, lamenting Patroclus in Book 19, and is later reimagined by Ovid, Barker, and Miller.