Lyric, a verse or poem that is, or supposedly is, susceptible of being sung to

the accompaniment of a musical instrument (in ancient times, usually a lyre)

or that expresses intense personal emotion in a manner suggestive of a song.
Lyric poetry expresses the thoughts and feelings of the poet and is sometimes
contrasted with narrative poetry and verse drama, which relate events in the
form of a story. Elegies, odes, and sonnets are all important kinds of lyric
poetry.

Epic, long narrative poem recounting heroic deeds, although the term has
also been loosely used to describe novels, such as Leo Tolstoys War and
Peace, and motion pictures, such as Sergey Eisensteins Ivan the Terrible. In
literary usage, the term encompasses both oral and written compositions. The
prime examples of the oral epic are Homers Iliad and Odyssey. Outstanding
examples of the written epic include Virgils Aeneid and Lucans Pharsalia in
Latin, Chanson de Roland in medieval French, Ludovico Ariostos Orlando
furioso and Torquato Tassos Gerusalemme liberata in Italian, Cantar de mio
Cid in Spanish, and John Miltons Paradise Lost and Edmund
Spensers Faerie Queene in English. There are also seriocomic epics, such
as the Morgante of a 15th-century Italian poet, Luigi Pulci, and the pseudo-
Homeric Battle of the Frogs and Mice. Another distinct group is made up of
the so-called beast epicsnarrative poems written in Latin in the Middle Ages
and dealing with the struggle between a cunning fox and a cruel and stupid
wolf. Underlying all of the written forms is some trace of an oral character,
partly because of the monumental persuasiveness of Homers example but
more largely because the epic was, in fact, born of an oral tradition. It is on
the oral tradition of the epic form that this article will focus.