Lukacs distinguished closed epic culture from the god-abandoned novel

Evidence

Kracauer, at the same time, wrote a forceful review for the Frankfurt Blätter für Kunst und Literatur (Magazine for Art and Literature) of this essay in the philosophy of history on the forms of great epic', with its distinction between the classical epics, on the one hand, as a form of epic writing concerned with the closed culture’ of a world filled with gods and with meaning, and the novel, on the other, as a form of epic writing concerned with the problematic culture of a world which had been abandoned by gods and meaning, an epoch of perfect sinfulness. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 263

Categorization

• DEFINE: Precisely defines Lukács’s epic-vs-novel distinction, a foundational concept Adorno carried into his own aesthetics.
• XREF: connects to: Lukács’s Theory of the Novel harbors a form-content contradiction that undermines its conclusions — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 368; Lukács holds that epic rebirth awaits social transformation, not the novelist’s will — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 367; Lukács moves from metaphysical to historical framing of the novel’s hero — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 372 (+4 more)

Broader Connections

• The novel’s rejection of origin-genealogies marks its secular, empty-time form #expands (0.78) — Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities, 148