EPIC AS A LITERARY

GENRE
Partha Sarathi Gupta
IMD EN101
LITERARY GENRES

• genre> French> kind> type

• Latin “genus” from “gener” > Greek “genos”
• Any category of literature, music or other forms of
art or entertainment, whether written or spoken,
audio or visual, or both, based on some set of
stylistic criteria
• The French word “genre” was nativized in English
from the 1840s.
Some ancient literary genres
• Lyric
• Epic
• Later, ode, ballad, elegy, sonnet, tragedy, comedy, novel
• Epic: A narrative art form common to many ancient societies
• Features: i) No single author
• ii) meant to be recited or sung
• iii) product of a synthesis of consciousness, shared value
• systems of a community
• iv) themes on value systems of ‘tribes’, survival strategies
• against odds, allegiances to the leader of the ‘tribe’ etc
Why is epic literature at all?
• Classification based on specific standards of judgement
• These standards are primarily based upon the objective of the work,
stylistic features, intensity of emotional affects generated in the
process of ‘hearing’ or later, ‘reading’
• Other ideological parameters too contribute to the classification of a
work within its genereric boundaries
• Epic(late 16th century English word) >epos (Greek): word, song >
epikos
DEFINITIONS
• A narrative art form common to many ancient societies (also some
modern societies)
• Often no single author (in its primary form) – written down after
centuries of oral tradition (in its literary form)
• Primarily to be sung
• Product of a pre-feudal, pre-capitalist society, when men lived in
clans and tribes
• Deals with codes of living and survival strategies of a clan in
allegiance to the leader or chieftain
• Product of a synthesis of consciousness and shared value systems
• Life and death rested on those codes or value systems
Examples

• The Mahabharata, The Ramayana

• The Iliad, The Odyssey

• Beowulf
The Illiad
• Hero-principle
• Epical consensus
• Homogeneous value systems which emerge as a ‘national consensus’
• Loyalty, allegiance to the king or lord: life/death-dependent on cause
• Ten-year war for he siege of the city of Troy
• War started because Paris, son of King Priam of Troy, kidnapped Helen
from Menelaus, a Greek and brother of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae.
• Agamemnon decides to go to war with the Trojans, and convinces other
armies to join in.
Epic divine machinery
• Gods too realize their own objectives by participating and
interfering in the human actions at multiple levels
• Zeus toys with mortals on many occasions
• Visits Agamemnon in a dream and convinces him to attack Troy with
everything he has, ensuring Agamemnon victory.
• Zeus also visits Hector, the leader of the Trojan armies, and
convinces him to do the same
• Many parallels in Indian epics
Troy Teaser….
Combat-Gear: All for Honour, Love and Loyalty
Is epic possible today?
• Shared and collective value systems do not exist more
• Epics phased out and paved the way for pluralized genres like the
novel.
• Value systems have been extremely pluralized since the eighteenth
century in Europe.
• However, attempts to reconstruct epics continued from time to time
• Milton’s Paradise Lost was an attempt to rebuild a national
consciousness in the 17th century through an orthodox Christian
attitude to life
Modern attempts at retro-narration

• Tolkein’s The Lord of the Rings

• The Bahubali series in Indian cinema
• An epic story in which a baby boy is found alive in the
middle of a river by a few villagers; they name him
Shiva….the journey to his past in the kingdom of
Mahismati….(it has all the ingredients of an epic)
• How Shiva rescues Devasena, the former queen of
Mahismati, who is a prisoner under the tyrannical rule of
King Bhallaldeva
Source of Bahubali myth

• The Adi Purana, a 9/10th Century Sanskrit poem (a

Jain text) dealing with the ten lives of the first

Tirthankara, Rishabhanatha and his two sons –

Bharata and Bahubali. It was composed by

Jinasena, a Digambara monk

Modern fetish for the exotic past
• Bahubali felt disgusted that he had to fight with his own
brother to attain material possessions which are nothing
but temporary in this life. So he decided to give everything
to his brother.

• Shared value systems of Jain philosophy: sacrifice,

austerity etc
What happens when we go epical?
To be continued:

•Tragedy as genre….