Epic Poem: A Comparative Analysis of John Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ with Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s ‘Meghnadbadh Kavya’

An epic in its most specific sense is a genre of classical poetry originating in Greece. The word epic is derived from the ancient Greek adjective, epikos, which means a poetic story .In Literature, an epic is a long narrative poem, which is usually related to heroic deeds of a person of an inexplicable courage and unequalled bravery. In order to depict this bravery and courage, the epic uses grandiose style. An Epic poem is a lengthy narrative poem ordinarily concerning a serious subject containing details of heroic deeds and events significant to a culture or nation. In this paper, I will give a comparative analysis of two epic poems from different time periods-one is Milton’s Paradise Lost and the other is Michael Madhusudan Dutt’s “Meghnadbadh Kavya”(The Slaying Of Meghnad).One is written in the 17th century(Paradise Lost)and the other in the 19th century(Meghnadbadh kavya). One is taken from the sacred texts of Christianity “Bible” and the other from the great Indian epic “The Ramayana”. But there is a common underlying principle that marks these two epic poems.