To compare the epics a gauge is to be set. Action being the first of criteria as percolated by Aristotle to every form of literary criticism the comparative study between epics may also began from the same. Action should have following three qualifications: first it should be one action, second it should be an entire action and third it should be a great action. Aristotle himself imputes that the unity of action is missing from the epics because of the very nature of an epic poem. Epic should be an entire action consists the dimension of a beginning, middle an end. Joseph Addison while analysing the same point points that we find the birth of Achilles’s anger, it’s continuance, and effects; same for Aeneas’s settlement in Itly and it’s result but Milton is considered to have excelled his predecessors on this ground. …show more content…
The greatness on Milton’s paradise lost is incontestable as the action it does not define the fate of a patch of land on earth or an empire alone but the destiny of entire species. One of peculiar feature of epic is it’s length not just the structural length but also the duration of