Abstract
Epic poems do not have postscripts. The Iliad ends with the funeral of Hector, tamer of horses, and the Aeneid with the pitiful death of Turnus; the Odyssey ends not with Odysseus’s triumph, nor with the gibbering ghosts of the suitors, but with Athena’s intervention in the non-battle between the suitors’ relatives and the forces of Odysseus. Paradise Lost concludes with Adam and Eve taking their solitary way through Eden with wandering steps and slow. The epic note in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina is admirably shown when the novel does not cease on the high note of Anna’s death, but with the apparently mundane detail of Vronsky going off to fight in Bulgaria, plagued by toothache. The epic’s ability to compass anything and everything is well illustrated by the deliberately flat conclusions of the great epics.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
S. Koljevic, The Epic in the Making (Oxford, 1980 ).
D. Wilson, The Life and Times of Vuk Stefanovic Karadzic (Oxford, 1970 ).
D. Comparetti, The Traditional Poetry of the Finns, trans. I.M. Anderson (London, 1898 ).
C. Manning and R. Smol-Stocki, The History of Modern Bulgarian Literature, (Westport, 1960 ) pp. 169–70.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1983 Tom Winnifrith, Penelope Murray and K. W. Gransden
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Winnifrith, T. (1983). Postscript. In: Winnifrith, T., Murray, P., Gransden, K.W. (eds) Aspects of the Epic. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05811-2_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05811-2_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-05813-6
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-05811-2
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)