Genealogies of Imagined Worlds: 2 The Rise of Epic: Heroic Worlds and the Expansion of Collective Possibility

If myth constitutes the cosmos as a horizon of possibility, the epic elaborates that horizon into a stage for human action. Where myth aligns the collective with the cosmic order, the epic dramatises the expansion of that alignment into history: heroic worlds, where individuals embody and test the scope of collective potential.

The epic is not simply a larger myth or a more elaborate story. It is a symbolic innovation: the emergence of figures who carry the collective beyond immediate ritual into projected futures and remembered pasts. The hero is not just a character but a construal of agency itself, a personification of how far the collective can extend its powers, its risks, its alignments. Through the trials and journeys of the hero, the collective encounters the possibility of its own transformation.

Epic narrative stages this expansion across multiple scales. Local struggles are folded into cosmic stakes; personal loyalty becomes indistinguishable from divine order; the death of a single warrior can shift the balance of the world. In this symbolic architecture, the collective does not simply inhabit the cosmos but tests its boundaries, discovers its limits, and imagines its renewal.

The rise of epic thus marks a deepening of symbolic reflexivity. The cosmos is no longer only given through myth but negotiated through narrative action. The hero embodies the relational cut between what is possible within the existing order and what might emerge through its reconfiguration. The epic makes visible the thresholds of possibility, dramatising the tension between tradition and transformation.

In this way, epic inaugurates the symbolic exploration of collective possibility. It is not simply the story of heroes but the collective’s experiment with its own horizons—projected, contested, and restructured through the figures who carry its fate.