I May Not Get There With You: “I've Been to the Mountaintop” as Epic Discourse

摘要

This essay forwards epic form as a way to better understand King's last speech,“I've Been to the Mountaintop”It demonstrates the way King uses epic frames to resonate with American and Christian epic narratives and to constitute the civil rights struggle as a new epic, and himself as an epic hero. King uses the epic frame to persuade and to encourage his audience, and to frame his controversial decisions within a wider context. This functions to encourage his audience to persevere and to conceptualize the movement on a grand scale.