Difference between epic and tragedy in aristotle's poetics
Answers
The first difference between the epic and the tragedy is their length. Tragedy by its nature is more concentrated and compact. Its length is based on the principle that the work must be short enough to be grasped as an artistic whole Hence its size is much more limited than that of. the epic. The time limits of epic are not fixed. It can relate a number of incidents happening simultaneously to different persons at the same time. Tragedy cannot show more than one incident happening at one place at one time. Tragedy can make use of a greater variety of metres, while the epic has to content itself with the heroic metre. The heroic metre or the hexameter is most dignified and stately. It can make use of rare and strange words. The tragic mode allows the use of metaphors, in the iambic and trochaic tetrameter. Aristotle says, Nature has established the appropriate metres for all forms of poetry. The iambic verse is close to the speech of men, and suited to imitation of men in action. The epic allows greater scope for the marvelous and the irrational. Tragedy however, cannot make too much use of the marvelous within the action. Epic can relate improbable tales because it is not going to be presented on stage before the eyes of the spectators. The degree of the irrational can be greater because it is left to the imagination, and not placed before the eyes. Indeed, the element of marvelous adds to the artistic pleasure and wonder of the epic. Such supernatural and the irrational incidents of the marvelous have to be placed outside the action of tragedy. The epic uses the mode of the narrative, and tragedy the mode of the dramatic. The epic allows for more and longer incidents than does tragedy. The epic allows multiplicity of stories, which would be unthinkable in the tragedy. The elements Music and Spectacle are only can be found in the tragedy. Tragedy has a vividness which is absent in epic. For all reasons which discussed above, even if the tragedy is read and not acted out on stage Tragedy is Superior to the Epic.
Aristotle’s Conclusion
Aristotle considers the question of the relative value of epic and tragedy. In his opinion, though tragedy has
been criticized as Vulgar, this is not so. “Tragedy, he maintains, is richer in its effects, adding music and
spectacle to epic resources; it presents its stories even when read no less vividly than the epic; it has a stricter