From Cotton Mather's Magnalia to Charles Olson's Maximus, American writers have produced works which qualify—for the most part self-consciously—as epics, and a preponderance of these works deals with the unfolding imperial diagram that became the United States. As a literary form, the epic has traditionally been an expression of the imperial élan, which in America is identified with the process we call the frontier, or with the expansionist adventures and industrial growth which served as surrogate—and corporate—expressions of the westering spirit. In six years we shall once again celebrate the first voyage of Columbus to the New World, an epical journey the 400th anniversary of which provided the occasion for Turner's great essay on the American frontier. We may be sure that in 1992 some sober assessments will be forthcoming concerning the closing down of America's post-frontiers, including corporate and technological perimeters that have carried the epic to Southeast Asia and the moon.