How Many Epics And Tragedies Do You Know?

[rex_yuan]

I don't think there are many English Epics. I only know Beowulf; Milton's Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts. Do you know more?


And Tragedies Except those written by Shakespeare.

[Virgil]

Wordsworth's The Prelude, Tennyson's In Memorium. I would also count some novels as epics: Joyce's Ulysses, Fielding's Tom Jones, Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. Also, Alexander Pope's The Rape of the Lock is I think a mock epic; I don't know if that counts. Also, if you take Shakespeare's Henry IV parts 1 and 2 and Henry V together as a trilogy, I have felt that that is Shakespeare's epic. These are what I can think of off the top of my head.

[bluevictim]

I guess it depends on what counts as an epic. Given the works suggested so far, I'd say Spenser's The Faerie Queen deserves a mention. For mock epics, there is also Pope's Dunciad.

For tragedies, the works of Marlowe immediately come to mind.

If prose is allowed, I think Moby Dick fits in somewhere when speaking of tragedies and epics.

[Petrarch's Love]

The Fairie Queen definately deserves a mention, though technically speaking many scholars classify it as a Romance (as in Arthurian Romance, not those paperbacks with ripped bodices on the cover). Sir Gawain and the Grene Knight is another that I think one can count as epic in a broad sense. I'm amazed no one has brought up The Lord of the Rings as a more recent epic tale composed by a great scholar of older epics.

[Aurora Ariel]

I have previously recommended some of these Classics already. John Milton's Paradise Lost (which I have actually quoted), Edmund Spenser's The Faery Queene, and also Geoffrey Chaucer's Troilus and Criseyde, and The Canterbury Tales, which is often cited as his master work, though others have concluded that the Troilus and Criseyde is a superior poem. The Canterbury Tales, is usually included ( in extract) at the beginning of many English Poetry collections, which include major works from each era, and it is a very lenghty poem - 17, 000 lines in full. He began his composition in 1387. I would also add Tennyson's epic Arthurian poem The Lady of Shalott, and The Ancient Mariner by Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

[rex_yuan]

Eugene O'Neill wrote many tragedies. It seems after Shakespeare, there for a long time were only comedies. Sheridan and Shaw liked to write comedies.

[Whifflingpin]

I understand that the elements required of classical tragedy are not merely the death of the hero, but that the hero should be almost perfect, but brought down inexorably by one flaw. Conrad's "Nostromo" can be viewed as a tragedy in this sense.

[Whifflingpin]

I've just noticed that Malory's Morte d'Arthur is quoted as en epic - it is also, even primarily, a tragedy.

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[Constantin]

Well, as I'm not an englishman, I may be not very good at English literature, but among English epic poems I know (of cours, except above-mentioned):
1. Samuel Daniel. "The civil wars".
2. Abraham Cauli. "David".
3. Samuel Butler. "Hudibras" - of course, it's a burlesque, but epic.
4. William Warner. "Albion's England".
5. John Dryden: "Annus mirabilis, The year of wonders".
Also there are several american epics.
It isn't a small amount at all - my native literature has only several good epics (one by Trediakowsky and two by Cheraskov).