What is an Epic?
'THE Epic' is such a vague category, that anybody discussing it seriously and at length, as the Master of Jesus does in this volume, must define what he means by it. For Dr. Tillyard there are four requirements, which he sets (20 in an introductory chapter on 'The Epic Spirit.' The first is "the simple one of high quality and of high seriousness." This Cuts out works like King Arthur and Leonidas (though this last, one may say, is a by no means unreadable narrative poem). "The second epic requirement can be roughed out by vague words like amplitude, breadth, inclusiveness and so on," which takes, • • ■ • • • • • • • • ■ • • • • • • • • • III • • • • • • • II • • • • • • • • FODOR Guides They are written by experts on the spot, they • are revised annually and they carry the benefits • of a Readers' Discount Club. No other guide books give such value for money.
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• 50 Fitzroy Street, London WI IN •••••■•••••••••■•••••■•••••■••■••••• • tragedy right out of the category, for a tragedy cannot contain the whole truth,' which an epic should aim at doing, including maybe such domestic concerns as cooking and the laundry, as we find WO Homer. Thirdly it must be controlled, driven on by a long effort of the will, the end seen in the beginning, which makes Rabelais or Don Quixote ineligible. Fourthly, and here Dr. Tillyard quotes Cascelles Abercrombie, it must express the "accepted unconscious metaphysic" of its age, be in some sense choric. It is not to be equated with the heroic poem; it may be in prose. For Dr. Tillyard the English epic came to its close at the end of the eighteenth centur4 when the neo-classical influence died out—so we hear nothing 0' Gebir, or of Festus, or of An Epic of Hades, or Dawn in Britain.; Though a great many works come under consideration, from Beowulf to The Prelude, through Sylvester, Drayton, Cowley and others, Ilia seven works which he considers as epic in our tongue are Pier' Plowman, The Faerie Queene, Arcadia, Paradise Lost, The Holy War, Pope's Iliad, and The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. In his preface, Dr. Tillyard suggests that it may be an act of folly to write about the Epic at all, since critical effort has for so long been directed towards the concentrated poem, and there is little curiosity about the historical evolution of literature. He may take heart. As he says, tastes change and there is already, just noticeable, a, revulsion in favour of the long poem, less 'dense,' not so cram-fah of irony, paradox and ambiguity. He is in greater danger of being reproved when, three-fifths of the way through the book, he refers, with no sense of sin, to "the ultimate arbiter of taste, the intelligent amateur reader." This will cause uneasy stirrings in Dublin, ia Reading, and other centres of critical activity. But he is with Dr. Johnson in this—and with a good many other people, including ths 'general reader' who is supposed in some quarters no longer to exist. At any rate such a reader can take up this book with certain confidence that he will enjoy it, as Dr. Tillyard leads him from Homer through Virgil, Lucan, Dante, Tasso, Camoens and others, from Herodotus to Finelon, whose works he puts to the test of his four requirements. He is always easily readable, as those who know his work would assume, whether he is describing or discussing the poems themselves, or divagating upon the critical theories of the epochs in which they were written. He quotes extensively, and courteouslY provides translations where necessary. He is naturally at his bcs! and his most exciting when he discusses the seven works whiell he Classes as our seven Epics, but his comments on the other works are all either illuminating or agreeably contentious. It is a book to be read through, and then to be picked up anywhere and read with pleasure, because it is enlivened by a disciplined critical enthusiast° sustained through eighteen years; and it takes us on an astonishing journey through the whole of European literature; most of the tinie a good many thousand feet above sea level. One need not accePt his framework; at any rate, theories, as 'Q' used to say, are 0111Y scaffolding to be kicked away when we come to admire the buildings; and one might perhaps wish that he had added what could be calle° 'cosmic' considerations to his four requirements, which would hay! made a stronger case for Sylvester, and enabled him to include, a' least for discussion, such works as Blackmore's Creation and Malletisf Excursion. But though here and there the reader will find himse loth to accept without reserve, Dr. Tillyard is so reasonable, s° persuasive, so generously appreciative, that anyone interested la poetry at all will have his perception sharpened, return to old friends with renewed zest, and be ready to explore palaces of pleasure, which he has so far, perhaps, only flitted through, or regarded distantlY with respectful admiration, or turned away from with impatient prejudice. BONAMY DODO°
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