Epic and Tragedy

Name:Thakar Aneri R.

Roll no.:-1

Paper no:-3

M.A.part:-1,Sem:-1

Year:-2012/13

Submitted To:-DR.Dilip Barad

Epic:-

There is a standard distinction between traditional and literary epic “Traditional epics”(also called folk epic or primary epics)were written versions of what had originally been oral poems about a tribal or national hero,during a war like age.Among these are the Iliad and Odyssey that the Greek ascribed to Homer:the Anglo-Saxon “Beowulf;the French chanson de Roland and the Spanish poems decided in the 20^th century .German epic Nibelungenlied “Literary epics” were composed by individual poetic crafts men in delibrate imitation of the traditional forms of this kind is Virgil Latin poem the ‘Aeneid’,which later served as the chief model for Milton’s literary epic paradise Lost(1667).Paradise lost in turn became,in the Romantic Period,a model for John Keats fragmentary epic Hyperion,as well as fore William Blake’s several epic,or “Prophetic books”,which translated in to Blake’s own mythic terms the biblical narrative that had been Milton’s subject.

In his Anatomy of criticism(1957) North shop Frye asserts that Homer established for his successors the “demonstration that the fall of an enemy,no less than of a friend or leader,is tragic and not comic” and that with this “objectives and disinterested element”the epic acquired an authority based “on the vision of nature as an impersonal order”The epic was ranked by Aristotle as second only on Tragedy,and by many Renaissance critics as the highest of all genres.The literacy epic is certainly the most ambitious of poetic enterprises,making immense demands on a poet’s knowledge,invention,and skill to sustain the scope,grandeur,and authority of a poem that tends to encompass the world of its day and a large portion of its learning.Despite numerous attempts in many languages over nearly three thousand years,we possess no more than a half dozen such poems of indubitable greatness. Literary epics are highly conventional compositions which usually share the following features,derived by way of the Aeneid from the traditional epics of Homer.

The Hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance.In the Iliad he is the Greek warrior Achilles,who is the son of the sea-nymph theist and Virgil Aeneas is the son of goddess Aphrodite.In “paradise lost”,Adam and Eve are the progenitors of the entire as the protagonist .He is both God and man .Blake’s primal figure is “The Universal Man”Albion,who incorporates,before his fall ,humanity and God and the cosmos as well.

The setting of the poem is ample in scale,and may be world wide,or even larger.Odysseus wanders over the Mediterranean basin(The whole of the world known at the time and in book 12 he descends into the scope of paradise lost is the entire universe for it takes place in heaven,on earth ,in hell,and in the cosmic space between.

The action involves extra ordinary deeds in battle,such as Achilles feats in the Trojan war,or a long arduous and dangerous journey intrepidly accomplished,such as the wanderings of Odysseus on his way back to his homeland,in the face of opposition by some of the Gods “paradise lost” includes the revolt in heaven by the rebel angels against  God,the journey of Satan through chaos to discover the newly created world,and his desperately audacious attempt to it wit God by corrupting mankind,in which his success is ultimately frustrated by the sacrificial action of Christ.

In these great actions the Gods and other supernatural being take an interest or an active part –the Olympian gods in Homer ,and Jehovah, Christ,and the angels in paradise lost.These supernatural agents were in the Neo classical Age is called the machinery in the sense that they were part of the literary contrivances of the epic

AN epic poem is a ceremonial performance,and is narrated in a ceremonial style which is deliberately distanced from ordinary speech and proportioned to the grandeur and formality of the heroic subject and architecture .Hence Milton’s “grand style”-his formal diction and elaborate and stylized syntax,which are in large part modeled on Latin poetry,his sonorous lists of names and wide-ranging allusions,and his imitation of Homer’s epic similes and epithets.

There are also widely used epic conventions or formulas,in the choice and ordering of episodes;prominent among them are these features,as exemplified in paradise lost

The metaphor begins by stating his argument or epic theme,invokes a muse or guiding spirit to inspire him in his great undertaking,then addresses to the muse the epic question,the answer to which inaugurates the narrative proper(paradise lost,1-49)

The narrative starts in medias res (“in the middle of things)at a critical point in the action.Paradise lost opens with the fallen angels in hell,gathering their scattered forces and determining on revenge.Not until books v-vii does the angel Raphel narrate to Adam the events in heaven which led to this situations;while in books Xi-XII ,after the fall, Michel foretells to Adam future events up to christ’s second coming.Thus,Milton’s epic although its action focuses on the temptation and fall of man,encompasses all time from the creation to the end of the world.

There are catalogues of some the principal characters,introduced in formal detail,as in Milton’s description of the procession of fallen angels in Book 1 of paradise lost.These characters are often given set speeches that reveal their diverse temperaments and moral attitudes;an example is the debate in pandemonium Book-II.

The term “epic” is often applied,by extension to narrative which differ in many respects from this model but manifest the epic spirit and grandeur in the scale,the scope and the profound human importance of their subjects.In this broad sense Dante’s 14^th century divine comedy and Edmund Spenser’s late 16^th century  the Faerie Queen(1590-96) are often called epics ,as the  conspicuously large scale and wide-ranging works of prose fiction such as Herman Melville’s mob Dick (1851)Leo Tolstoy’s war and peace (1869) and James Joyce’s Ulysses(1922):this last work achieves epic scope in representing the events of an ordinary day in Dublin(16 June 1904) by modeling them on the episodes of Homer’s odyssey.George Lukacs used the term “bourgeois epic” for all novels which in his view reflect the social reality of their capitalist age on a broad scale.

Tragedy:-

             The term is broadly applied to literary and especially to dramatic,representations of serious actions which evaluate in a disastrous conclusion for the protagonist (the chief character)more precise and detailed discussions of the tragic form properly begin although they should not end with Aristotle’s classic analysis in the poetic (fourth century B.C,)Aristotle based his theory on induction from the only examples available to him,the tragedies of Greek dramatists such as Aeschylus,Sophocles and Euripides.In the subsequent two thousand years and more,many new and artistically effective types of serious plots ending in a catastrophe have been developed types that Aristotle had no way of foresting. The many attempts to stretch Aristotle’s analysis to apply to later tragic forms serve merely to blur his critical categories and to obscure important differences among diverse types of plays,all of which have proved to be dramatically effective.When flexibly managed ,however Aristotle’s discussions apply in some part to many tragic plots and his analytic concepts serve as a suggestive starting point for identifying the differentiate of various non Aristotelian modes of tragic construction.

Aristotle defined tragedy as “the imitation of an action that is serious and also,as having magnitude complete in itself,” in the medium of poetic language and in the manner of dramatic rather than of narrative presentation involving “incidents arousing pity and fear,where with to accomplish the catharsis of such emotions.”Precisely how to interpret Aristotle’s “catharsis” means it is “purgation” or “purification” or both is disputed.On two matters,however a number of commentators agree.Aristotle in the first place sets out to account for the undeniable though remarkable fact that many representation of suffering and defeat leave an audience feeling not depressed,but relieved,or even exalted .In the second place ,Aristotle uses this distinctive effect on the reader which he calls “The pleasure of pity and fear” as the basic way to distinguish the tragic form comic other forms and he regards the dramatist’s aim to  produce this effect in the highest degree as the choice and moral qualities of a tragic protagonist and the organization of the tragic plot.

Accordingly,Aristotle says that the “Tragic hero” will most effectively evoke both our pity and terror if he is neither thoroughly good nor thoroughly bad but a mixture of both and also that this tragic effect will be stronger if the hero is  “better than we are” in the sense that he is of higher than ordinary moral worth.Such  a man is exhibited as suffering a change in fortune from happiness to misery because which he is led by his “Hamartia”-his “error of judgement” or as it is often though less literally translated,his tragic flaw.(one common form of Hamartia in Greek tragedies was hubris,that “pride” or over weening self-confidence which leads a protagonist to disregard a divine warming or to violate an important moral law)”The tragic hero like Oedipus in Sophocles , Oedipus the king moves us to pity because he is not an evil man ,his misfortune is greater than he deserves;but he moves us also to fear,because we recognize similar possibilities of error in our own lesser and fallible selves.Aristotle grounds his analysis of  “The very structure and incidents of the play”.On the  same principle the plot,he says which will most effectively evoke  “Tragic pity and fear” is one in which the events develop through complication to a catastrophe in which there occurs  a sudden.

Medieval Tragedies:-

This tragedies are simply the story of a high person of high status who whether deservedly or not is brought from prosperity to wretchedness by an unpredictable turn of the wheel of fortune.The tragedies of Elizabethan period owed much to the native religious drama,the miracle and morality plays which had developed independently of classical influence,senecan tragedy;senecan tragedy was written tobe recited rather than acted ,but to English play writers ,who thought that these tragedies had been intended for the stage ,they provided the model for an organized five-act play with a complex plot and an elaborately formal style of dialogue.Senecan drama in the Elizabethan age had two main lines of development .One of these consisted of academic tragedies written in close imitation of the senecan model ,including the use of a Chorus ,and usually constructed according to the rules of three unities.

Revenge tragedy or tragedy of blood

       This type of play derived from seneca’s favorite materials of murder,revenge,ghosts, mutilation and carnage.Thomas Kyd’s the Spanish Tragedy(1586) established his popular form.Its subject is murder and quest for vengeance and it includes a ghost insanity,suicide a play within a play sensational incidents and a gruesomely bloody ending.

Bourgeois or Domestic tragedy;it was written in prose and presented protagonist frm the middle or lower social ranks who suffers a common place or domestic disaster.George Lilos the London merchant or the history of George Barn well about merchantman apprentice who succumbs to a heartless courtesan and comes to a bad end by robbing his employer and murdering his uncle is still read,at least in college courses.

Conclusion:-

          The epic uses  the mode of the narrative and tragedy,the mode of the dramatic.The plot of epic as of tragedy,must have unity.The epic follows for more and longer incidents than does traged. The epic allows multiplicity of stories,which would be unthinkable in the tragedy .The elements which are however only to be found in the tragedy are music and spectacle.Tragedy has a vividness which is absent in epic.

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