Epic poetry tells a dramatic story in a poem. There are characters in the story. It is usually long, and takes place in different settings. Epic poems started in prehistoric times as part of oral tradition. The Kyrgyz Epic of Manas is one of the longest written epics in history.

Beowulf is a typical example, written in Old English. Well-known people who wrote epics were Homer, Virgil, Ovid, Dante, Edmund Spenser and Milton.William Wordsworth's Prelude plays with epic ideas though the poem is autobiography.