Having been born and bred in Varmland, Selma Lagerlof is conversant with the peasant culture and its folklore. In "Gosta Berling's Saga", she is primary occupied with a provincial type and investigates deeply into the spirit of the folk-life of Varmland. It took her ten years before her work was achieved. There were circumstances, which motivated its conception; the sale of her childhood's home " Mårbacka" emphasized her will to preserve the tales she was told about the Varmland. Using the cavaliers' story at Ekeby, she underlines the importance of work, love and morality. Because of its style, its relationship to the Icelandic saga, its proximity to the primitive oral tradition, its affinity to nature and its romance Gosta berling 's Saga discloses all the features of the epic tale.

The Epic genre could be defined as a long narrative poem recounting actions, travels, adventures, and heroic episodes and written in a high style (with ennobled diction, for example). It may be written in hexameter verse, especially dactylic hexameter. Although her rhythm is prose, her diction is poetic. For instance in the chapter "Gosta Berling Poet" Gosta

is asked how does he like the promise land and here is his answer: "It flows with milk and honey ... we empty the mountains of their iron and fill our cellar with wine. The fields bear gold with which we gild life's misery, and we fell our forests to build pavilions and skittle alleys". The recurrent comparisons and metaphors render the poetic style as well as all the romances that we witnessed.

The narrator's voice is almost Omni-present thanks to the style of the author. She renders entirely the impression of oral tale. The reader can imagine himself sitting around a fire listening to her. Furthermore, the use of personal comments and interjections could remind the reader of a personal diary in the chapter "Landscape":"Now I must beg those of my readers who know this lake ... to skip a few pages". By communicating with her readers, Selma Lagerlof creates an intimate spirit, she divulge all her thought like secrets. The reader can notice as well the use of chronological involution techniques such as the "flash back" and the "in medias re" that help the reader to picture the life at Ekeby and its inhabitants. In Gosta Berling's Saga, these retrospective tools occur repeatedly and thus emphasize the features of epic. Another recurrent device of the heroic epic tradition is the sense of history. This strong sense of the past, which links it with certain historical eras, is included within the mystical and the imaginative components. In fact, the story reflects a certain period of well-known history, in the chapter "Torgan", " There was many there who could tell you how hard they had fared during the famine years of 1808 and 1809, and in the cold winter of 1812, when the sparrows froze to death. Famine was no stranger to them; they had seen his grim hand before. They knew how bark was prepared for bread, and how the cows would learn to eat moss". Though the

Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1259
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)