“The reason can only be this: heroic poetry depends on an heroic age, and an age is heroic because of what it is, not because of what it does.”
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By the general process of epic poetry, I mean the way this form of art has constantly responded to the profound needs of the society in which it was made.
If epic poetry is a definite species, the sagas do not fall within it.
That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.
Traditional matter must be glorified, since it would be easier to listen to the re-creation of familiar stories than to quite new and unexpected things the listeners, we must remember, needed poetry chiefly as the re-creation of tired hours.