Is Beowulf An Epic Or Heroic Tragedy?

Intro

Thesis: In light of Aristotle’s Poetics should Beowulf be considered an epic or heroic tragedy.

Definitions of an epic and heroic tragedy according to Aristotle. “Tragedy is a representation of an action of a superior kind-grand, and complete in itself- presented in embellished language, in distinct forms in different parts, performed by actors rather than by a narrator, effecting, through pity and fear, the purification* of such emotions” (Poetics 23).

“Now tragedy is the representation of action, and action involves agents who will necessarily have certain qualities of both character and intellect. It is because of the qualities of the agents that we classify their actions, and it because of their actions that they succeed or fail in life” (Poetics 23-24).

“Tragedy tries as far as possible to keep within a period of twenty-four hours or thereabouts, while epic, in contrast, is unrestricted in time” (Poetics 23).

“Anyone who can tell what is good and what is bad in tragedy understands epic too, since all the elements of epic are present in tragedy even though not all the elements of tragedy are present in epic” (Poetics 23).

“The story [of epic] should, as in

The beginning of the plot, the introduction and killing of Grendel, is “an item that does not itself follow necessarily upon something else, but which has some second item following necessarily upon it” (Poetics 26). The beginning of the plot, the killing of Grendel, is necessarily followed by the revenge and subsequent killing of Grendel’s mother. In a way those two events alone can make the story of Beowulf complete; however, the addition of a third part of the story, the story of the dragon and its effect on Beowulf, makes the story a tragedy due to the emotion of pity and fear experienced by the