Epic and tragedy

2. Differences
Tragedy Epic
• Meaning • Meaning
• Large audience • Refined audience
• Vulgar • Less vulgar
• Melodramatic • Long narrative
performance poem
• Individual • Universal

3. * Considering tragedy superior
• Music , spectacle
• Reading without performing
• More compact - more concentration
* Tragedy over epic
story in shorter span of time
Degree of unity
Paradox-No man is complete

4. Dissimilarities
• Length: Magnitude / limited
• Action: Single revolution /No limit
• Unity in one place/Incidents numerous
• Metre :iambic../ hexameter
• Subject matter
• ex, Homer’s Iliad, paradise lost,

5. Dissimilarities
• Low of probability and necessity
• Plot: plots of tragedies, episodic
• Story- past/ present
• Method
“Ah god! It was true! All the prophecies!
Now, o light, may I look on you for the Example
last time! I, Oedipus, Oedipus, damned of
in his birth, in his marriage damned,
damned in the blood he shed with his
tragedy
own hand!” Oedipus and his story are
the true definition of a tragic hero.

7. To, Department of English
Maharaja Krishna Kumar Sighji
Bhavnagar University