952 
 
 B811 
 
 
 
 U.C BERKELEY UBRARY 
 
^ 
 
 .) 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE 
 ART-EPIC AND THE FOLK-EPIC 
 
 CORNELIUS B. BRADLEY 
 
 [Reprinted from the University Chronicle, Vol. VIII. No. 4] 
 
 BERKELEY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY PRESS 
 
 1906 
 
o 
 
 ON THE DISTINCTION BETWEEN THE ART-EPIC 
 AND THE FOLK-EPIC.i 
 
 Cornelius B. Bradley. 
 
 When we call the Paradise Lost and other poems of its 
 kind Art-epics, and so distinguish them from certain others 
 which we call Folk-epics, we do not mean, I imagine, that 
 the two are necessarily different in subject-matter or in 
 essentials of treatment: for the so-called Art-epics have 
 confessedly copied the others in these points. Nor do we 
 mean that in genesis and development the two are different 
 throughout. It is clear that both kinds alike strike their 
 roots deep into the same subsoil of communal consciousness 
 and of racial activity wherein are the beginnings of spiritual 
 and artistic life for man. Both kinds take shape under the 
 determining influence of prevalent ideals of beauty, of con- 
 duct, and of character, which are racial and not individual. 
 The ultimate materials for both, whether in the form of 
 story, myth, legend, cosmogony, or theology, are, as we 
 know, the resultants of cooperative efforts on the part of 
 untold generations of men. The earlier stage then is essen- 
 tially alike in both; and so too is the final. For the final 
 form in both is determined by the fusing, the coordination, 
 and reduction of all this mass in the central glow of some 
 individual imagination, and the recasting of it in the mold 
 of a single, adequate, poetic form. Whatever differences 
 then we discern between the Art-epic and the Folk-epic 
 
 ^ Paper read at a meeting of the Philological Club, April, 1905. 
 
 136642 
 
miLst be either differences in the intermediate stage directly 
 affecting the final form ; or, possibly, some difference in 
 the poet 's temperament or circumstances ; or even some dif- 
 ference in ourselves, which may modify our impression of 
 the result. The factors efficient here would seem to be 
 these: (1) The individual power and skill of the re dactor 
 actually brought into play. (2) The relative conditions of 
 age, form, and consistency in which the various materials 
 are furnished to his hand, in so far as these affect the in- 
 herent difficulty of the redactor's task, and the consequent 
 demand for the exercise of conscious art. (3) The contem- 
 porary attitude of men regarding this material, as affecting 
 the freedom which the poet may allow himself in dealing 
 with it; and (4) our own knowledge or ignorance 6f the 
 precise facts and conditions of the redaction, which uncon- 
 sciously, but surely, affects our impression, and therefore 
 our classification, of individual epics. 
 
 As for the first point, organizing and poetic power of 
 a very high order is presumed in the case of any poem 
 which the suffrage of the world has crowned as an epic. 
 That fact is the demonstration of its presence. Differences 
 of degree within this first order of poetic power, or differ- 
 ences of aspect and function, while affecting the rank of 
 the epic, so far as I can see, do not at all affect its classifi- 
 cation under one or other of the two kinds now under con- 
 sideration. There remains, however, the pertinent ques- 
 tion of how constantly and how pervasively is this organiz- 
 ing power evoked, how large is the demand made upon it, 
 and how obvious are the proofs of its exercise. Since 
 these are matters immediately concerned with the remain- 
 ing heads of my discussion, I shall defer them until we 
 encounter them in their places further on. 
 
 The second point — t he actual f orm and, condition of the 
 raw material of epic poetry which comes to the redactor's 
 hands — is one of considerable importance. If the redac- 
 tion takes place not too long after the close of the natural 
 
growth of folk-lore and legend ; if the material reflects the 
 imaginative life of a single unitary people, and therefore 
 of a single epoch, we should expect to find in it a degree of 
 homogeneity both in matter and in manner, which would 
 very greatly simplify the task of redaction. Artistic selec- 
 tion would be very largely anticipated by what we might 
 call natural selection. Many of the forms and features of 
 communal art, being already in harmony with each other 
 and with the main theme, would inevitably be preserved in 
 the finished work. Not that there would be less need of 
 the consummate poet, or less opportunity for him, but his 
 art would largely efface him. The pervading sense of a 
 single dominant personality would to us be greatly lowered, 
 with corresponding heightening of the features of imper- 
 sonal, i.e., racial, cooperation. A work so brought into final 
 form we should certainly count a Folk-epic; — and such a 
 work is the Iliad. 
 
 But let us suppose the contrary case : — that the mass of 
 legendary material for the coming epic concerns a number 
 of diverse peoples ; that its various elements have been de- 
 veloped under widely differing conditions, and even in dif- 
 ferent epochs ; that there are fundamental discrepancies of 
 situation or of story to be harmonized or eliminated, action 
 to be newly motived, and all its scenes brought as it were 
 into one focus and reduced to one scale; that all its life, 
 of whatever original cast, is all to be made to assume the 
 guise and setting of an already fabulous heroic age whose 
 only examples are the Iliad and the Odyssey. In such a 
 case the dominance of the individual and of his art will be 
 greatly enhanced; — we shall everywhere feel the presence 
 of the poet. Quite apart perhaps from what we now know 
 of its origin, we might for this reason alone account the 
 fi^neid an Art-ppie. 
 
 Or let us put one other case. If in the thirteenth cen- 
 tury, either in France or in England, the Arthurian legend 
 had found its poet of genius, and if he had been uplifted 
 
6 
 
 on a swelling tide of national or racial enthusiasm, we 
 should doubtless have had a genuine Folk-epic. But if 
 ^Milton in the seventeenth century had carried through to 
 completion his earlier and long-brooded purpose, — had 
 given us the British instead of the Hebrew story, — we 
 should certainly have had an Art-epic. Between these two 
 dates — in Chaucer's time or again in Malory's, had either 
 of these men been fitted for the task, — we should have had 
 a result which might conceivably have been of either kind, 
 according to the obtrusiveness of the personality and art, — 
 the original prominence, that is, of the personal signature ; 
 but in part also according to the degree in which the lapse 
 of time has caused that signature to fade from our view. 
 But, on the other hand, had Shakespeare's genius been epi- 
 cal rather than dramatic, and had he — late as his period 
 was — addressed himself to this story, I venture to believe 
 the work would be rated as a Folk-epic. Shakespeare is the 
 known and historic type of a great poetic organizer like 
 our unknown and mythical Homer. His is the skill to work 
 with unhewn stones — with masses of material most diverse 
 in origin and form, — and with the least possible alteration 
 of them, to build them into a noble edifice. HLs is the art 
 which eflPaces art, as it certainly did even to his contem- 
 poraries. The very opposite is true when we come to the 
 only great poet who ever actually wrought in these partic- 
 ular materials — to Tennyson and his Idylls of the King. 
 Though these attain not to the continuity and complete- 
 ness of the epic and are therefore only epical, there can be 
 no doubt as to their classification with reference to the ques- 
 tion we are now considering. They represent the acme of 
 conscious and personal art, — the utmost remove from the 
 features of the Folk-epic. 
 
 The third point, — as to the part which contemporary 
 belief, conviction, and reverence for tradition may play in 
 limiting the redactor's freedom in the exercise of his art, — 
 seems to me to be of not nearly so much importance to our 
 
present discnssion as some appear to think. That strong 
 contemporary feeling toward the tradition — and especially 
 the redactor's own feeling as reflecting that of his time — 
 would powerfully affect the freedom of his art along cer- 
 tain lines is undoubtedly true. But that the presence of 
 such affirmative feeling should have much to do with mak- 
 ing the outcome an epic of the Folk-species, or that its ab- 
 sence, leaving the poet more fancy-free, should of itself 
 tend to make his art more dominant, and so give us an Art- 
 epic, seems to me an unwarranted conclusion, and one not 
 borne out by the facts. Virgil, as Heinze has abundantly 
 shown, feels bound religiously to respect the tradition. He 
 may choose between different versions of the tradition that 
 one which best suits his purpose. He may fill up gaps in 
 the tradition with material of his own invention. He may 
 graft foreign tradition upon the native or the Grecian 
 stock. Above all, he may amplify, embellish, may supply 
 motive, occasion, and setting; may infuse into it all his 
 own genius, his own poetic aspiration. But in all essentials 
 Virgil sticks close to his text. Nevertheless his work is the 
 very type of the Art-epic. 
 
 On the other hand Homer seems to have worked in an 
 atmosphere of much greater freedom. Myth and legend 
 seem plastic in his hands, and that in spite of much greater 
 apparent belief and reverence, both as regards the heroic 
 and as regards the divine phases of the legend, than is con- 
 ceivable in Virgil's time. 
 
 Milton, at a greater distance from the origins than was 
 the case with either of these, is nevertheless confronted 
 both within himself and in the world about him by a con- 
 viction much more rigid and definite than Homer's, and by 
 a scruple which bound him to follow the letter much more 
 closely than did Virgil. It is worth Avhile moreover in this 
 connection to note how closely Tennyson too has followed 
 Malory, though surely neither the poet himself nor his age 
 could have felt the slightest scruple — unless it were an 
 
artistic one — to prevent him from doing as he would with 
 heroes whose very existence at all in the flesh is openly 
 doubted or denied. Certain human types from the old 
 myths, it is true, have become symbolic — are now psycho- 
 logical studies, and poets in succeeding ages are fond of 
 shaping them anew in the image and fashion of their own 
 times, and trying their reaction under changed conditions 
 and social ideals. Such old types freely dealt with anew 
 are of immense importance and interest as landmarks of 
 the progress of human thought, and the gradual shift of 
 its ideals. Such are the Ulysses of Dante and of Tennyson, 
 the Prometheus of Shelley and of Lowell, the Faust of Mar- 
 lowe and of Goethe, and the various impersonations of the 
 Satan-type — including Prometheus — from the Satan of Job 
 to ]\Iephistopheles. These are dealt with more freely per- 
 haps in proportion to their distance from their originals. 
 But apart from such cases as these, the very reverse of the 
 usual assumption would seem quite as close to the truth, if 
 not closer; namely, the nearer the beginnings, the more plas- 
 tic in genera] is the material of the tradition ; and not until 
 late is it likely to crystallize into definite dogma, or become 
 a matter of creed which one touches at his peril. 
 
 The last point is one I have never seen discussed or 
 even mentioned; yet it seems to me deserving of serious 
 attention. The assignment of a great poem to the one class 
 or the other is not in every case, surely, a matter of ob- 
 jective certainty or of absolute demonstration. It is rather 
 the outcome of a total impression made upon us; — the im- 
 pression of the presence or absence of a single conscious 
 purpose powerful enough to coordinate and unify all de- 
 tails, and of a conscious personal technique and art which 
 make themselves felt there in the work. All poems that we 
 know of epic grade root themselves in some great tradition 
 of which they are the final and consummate flower. All of 
 them therefore have the popular, the communal element, 
 the fragmentary and discrepant material as their basis, 
 
needing to be fused in the central heat of some great artistic 
 imagination before the broken fragments can become a 
 great poem. Convei*sely all poems which we account worthy 
 to take rank as epics have had, we feel sure, from some 
 hand this final personal shaping; since the constant ten- 
 dency to ramify and cliverge7 which is the mark of the 
 popular, the communal, phase of the process, could never 
 reverse itself without passing out of that phase into the 
 phase of personal art. Both the communal origin, then, 
 and the personal art are present in every epic. The dif- 
 ference therefore becomes a question of degree and not of 
 kind : How completely has the organizing imagination and 
 purpose mastered these unorganized materials? How far 
 have the resources of the poet's expressive art sufficed to 
 give the resulting conception adequate and harmonious ex- 
 pression? Perfection in either kind it is idle to look for. 
 No imagination can suffice to reconcile all discrepancies, to 
 fill up all gaps in material so originating ; nor can any art 
 working on so vast a scale efface entirely all traces of the 
 tools of previous workmen. Every work of art is really a 
 palimpsest, but epic art more so than any other, and in- 
 evitably so. 
 
 Here as elsewhere hindsight is proverbially better than 
 foresight; — we see what we are prepared to see. The dis- 
 tinguished scientist, you remember, who when asked to ob- 
 serve some specially interesting object made ready for him 
 in the field of the miscroscope, instinctively paused to ask 
 before he would look, "What am I to see?" was quite 
 right. Had he not received that direction, he might have 
 looked in vain; — he might have missed entirely the in- 
 tended demonstration. So here in a great epic a conscious 
 purpose is much more clearly discerned when we know what 
 to look for, when we have learned from other sources some- 
 what of the artist's character and tendencies. His art is 
 more apparent the more we know of his artistic training, 
 his masters, his models, and the history of his development. 
 
10 
 
 If these elements in his case are well known, and known 
 to be eflficient and powerful, the presumption of course will 
 be strong that they will be found in the epic he has worked 
 upon, and that they will determine its artistic quality. But 
 it is conceivable also that for one reason or another these 
 powers, though generally pronounced enough, may have 
 been feebly exercised in any particular case; or even 
 though competent, the poet may be without a strong ego- 
 istic manner. In such cases we might find ourselves quite 
 at a loss, and our demonstration would not be complete 
 till Avc hnd unearthed the quarry in which he worked, had 
 found the rough blocks which he was to build into his 
 stately edifice: — that is, had discovered his sources in the 
 form in which they came to his hands. Not until this has 
 been done have we any absolute control upon subjective 
 and impressionistic judgment. In Milton's case we have 
 of course full infonnation on all these points. Yet it seems 
 to us, no doubt, that without any of this information we 
 should be able to recognize anywhere that splendid egoism 
 of character and the music of that "organ voice of Eng- 
 land"; — and so I agree we should in general. But I am 
 not so sure of detail and of special passages. What would 
 the art critic of three millenniums hence, with no Bible, no 
 Homer, no Dante, no Tasso, no history, and no other poems 
 of Milton to afford him a clew — ^what would he make of 
 the allegory of Sin and Death, of that grotesque Limbo on 
 "the backside of the world," of that other grotesque and 
 irrationality of battle in Heaven with gunpowder and 
 cannon, of coarse punning speech on the part of arch- 
 angels who count themselves equals of the Most High, or 
 of that scene in the grand audience chamber of Hell, when 
 "Princes, Powers, Potentates, the flower of Heaven once 
 lost" assembled to hear the report of their mighty leader's 
 success, suddenly fall prone and grovelling in guise of ser- 
 pents, and instead of the intended applause utter only "a 
 dismal universal hiss"? Or what would he make of the 
 
11 
 
 passages where Milton's scruple about the very words of 
 scripture has given us whole blocks of lines which are little 
 more than centos, whose metrical form even does not con- 
 form to rules which Milton elsewhere observes? Under 
 criticism like that we are only too familiar with would not 
 these almost inevitably be marked as ' ' intrusive materials, ' ' 
 unassimilated and unassimilible ; — instances in fact of the 
 very sort of thing which characterize the Folk-epic? Yet 
 most of these, as we know, are Milton's own invention pure 
 and simple, and are not found in any of his models or 
 sources. All this, be it observed, in the case of Milton, 
 whose personality and art are as definite and unmistakable 
 as any we know in literature. But suppose the artist of 
 Paradise Lost had been quite another, yet as great or even 
 greater than Milton ; but an artist of a different method ; — 
 suppose it had been Shakespeare, working broadly and rap- 
 idly, incurious of minute and uniform finish, compelled by 
 haste to collaborate with other men, to appropriate whole 
 blocks of material either as it stood, or with slight touches 
 of his own, — an artist of no one fixed mood and master- 
 temper to betray him, but of immense range and compass — 
 had it been so, what could the critic do but pronounce the 
 work a Folk-epic ? Is it not conceivable — nay, is it not even 
 probable — that such is the case with Homer? Clearly then 
 our knowledge — that is, our ignorance — of the facts may 
 determine our judgment, and may determine it wrongly. 
 It is at least a significant fact that of all the works we 
 agree to call Folk-epics not one, so far as I can recall, has 
 grown to completion within the range of our vision and 
 recorded observation; and not one of our so-called Art- 
 epics is the work of an artist we do not personally know. 
 
 These arguments, it may be said, are purely hypothet- 
 ical; and such they are frankly admitted to be. But such 
 too, it seems to me, are the arguments which oppose them. 
 The fact is that the group of poems we are now consid- 
 ering is so small, so essentially diverse in character, and 
 
12 
 
 with few exceptions so absolutely unknown to us in the real 
 facts and circumstances of their origin, that sound general- 
 ization is extremely difficult, to say the least; and dogrma- 
 tism of any sort is entirely out of place. If we consider 
 the standard epics of both sorts along with other forms of 
 literature most nearly allied to them, we shall find that 
 they form an almost perfect series with no impassable gaps. 
 Beginning with mere collections of ballads and lays, like 
 those of Percy and Child, they grade upward into cycles 
 like the Arthurian Romances, and these again into definite 
 redactions and integrations like the Morte d 'Arthur or the 
 Kalevala. Between these and the lower grade of epics — 
 more or less doubtfully of that rank — such as Beowulf, the 
 Nibelungenlied, and the Mahabharata, it would be difficult 
 to draw any sure line save that of our own knowledge or 
 ignorance of the precise conditions of the final shaping. 
 Passing these, we come to the Homeric poems, the surest 
 types for us of the genuine Epic. And after all the tumult 
 of battle which has raged about them, it is interesting to 
 note, as Matthew Arnold points out, that the most abiding 
 impression they make upon the appreciative reader is the 
 impression of essential unity, pointing clearly to the work 
 of some single poet of uncommon mastery and skill, though 
 otherwise unknown to us. In this same group we should 
 doubtless put the Ramayana and very likely some others 
 of unknown authorship, if only we count them in general 
 character and excellence worthy to stand in this privileged 
 group — as, for instance, the Cid, or even some of those 
 named in the preceding group. Of intrinsic character quite 
 akin to these, but of known authorship, are the ^'Eneid, the 
 Divina Commedia, Shah Namah, and Paradise Lost; and 
 with these, but for its dramatic form, — in this case hardly 
 a vital matter, — should be associated Goethe's Faust. Be- 
 yond these still are certain elaborate poetical studies both 
 ancient and modern, in various form and to different ar- 
 tistic ends, but on themes from the epic field : — Prometheus, 
 
13 
 
 Ulysses, Agamemnon, Ajax, Enceladus, CEnone, Iphigenia, 
 with Tennyson's Arthurian Idylls and many others; — 
 through which field our quest brings us back once more into 
 the realm of general poetry. 
 
 To sum up very briefly, then, the conclusions of this 
 paper may be stated somewhat as follows: (1) The ulti- 
 mate materials used in each of the epic forms we have been 
 considering are the same : mj^h, legend, and tradition. The 
 complete and final form moreover is due to the skill of some 
 individual poet and artist. The elements of difference then 
 are either the essential character and the degree of elabora- 
 tion of the popular materials used, or the boldness of the 
 signature of the artist. (2) If we regard the actual condi- 
 tion of the materials used as not of any great importance 
 in this present discussion, and therefore negligible here, 
 there remains the signature of the artist to be considered — 
 the impress of his personality. Not merely will this act- 
 ually vary through all degrees with the character and force 
 of the artist, but the signature itself in any given work is 
 not forever a constant quantity. Bolder and blacker at 
 first, it inevitably fades with time; and especially when 
 read in the twilight of our ignorance, it is sure to seem to 
 us fainter than it really is. It cannot therefore be a sure 
 criterion by which to classify works of different men and 
 of different times. In further support of this point is the 
 surprising uniformity of rating in the one group all the 
 works of known artists, and in the other all the works of 
 artists unknown, (3) The distinction then between the 
 Folk-epic and the Art-epic so-called is a vanishing one, 
 convenient indeed for certain purposes of education and 
 criticism, and in typical cases apparent enough for such 
 purposes ; but too subjective — too impressionistic — too little 
 based on fact and knowledge to be final. 
 
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