heroic poetry

heroic poetry, another name for epic poetry. The kind of verse line used for epic poetry in a given language is known as the heroic line: the dactylic hexameter in Greek and Latin, the iambic pentameter in English, the alexandrine in French, the hendecasyllabic line in Italian. The heroic quatrian or heroic stanza is not used for epics, but is so named because it employs the English heroic line: it consists of four pentameters rhyming abab, as in Gray's ‘Elegy written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751), or aabb.