[Footnote 2: _Losheit._ A word coined by Hegel to denote this relation of poetry to external objects in their independence.] [Footnote 3: _Die Gebehrden_, lit., gestures, in which sense it is used in a subsequent passage.] [Footnote 4: We should rather have expected "the material of plastic art." The contrast is rather between the nature of the medium in each case than the finished product. So far as the latter is concerned the musical composition is as dependent, even more dependent for its presentment on human activity as poetical composition.] [Footnote 5: _Des Klingens unseres Gewohnheit._ It is not quite clear what the meaning is here. The meaning may be as in the interpretation above. But it is rather difficult to see how, so far as mere print goes, we can be conscious of actual sound at all, unless it is intended here to include at least the act of reading; an alternative interpretation would be the "habitual verbal accent," but we should in that case have rather expected the substantive _Nachdrucks_ for _Klingens._] [Footnote 6: Hegel means of course that as that notion stands midway between the objectivity of sense-perception and the concept of thought, so too this classification will be based on the attitude of the art either to the personal life, or the objects of sense, as the one aspect is more strongly represented or the other.] [Footnote 7: _Dem Subject._ That is, I understand, the individual subject generally, not merely the conscious life of the poet or the singer.] [Footnote 8: _In seiner Gediegenheit_, _i.e.,_ as concrete.] [Footnote 9: _Dies Subjektive._ The realization of self in the world is part of that world regarded as a rational and self-conscious process, Spirit.] [Footnote 10: _Sich die Gebehrde anschliesst_, _i.e._ a practical attitude to the world, involving gesture and other actions.] [Footnote 11: Hegel's expression is "the personality of expression," _i.e.,_ the personal aspect of expression.] A. EPIC POETRY The Epos, word, saga, states simply what the fact is which is translated into the word. It acquires an essentially self-consistent content in order to express the fact _that it is_ and how it is. What we have here brought before consciousness is the object regarded as object in its relations and circumstances, in their full compass and development, the object, in short, in its determinate existence. We propose to treat our subject-matter as follows: _First_, we shall attempt to describe the _general_ character of what is Epical: _Secondly_, we shall proceed to some _particular_ features, which in respect to the real Epos are of exceptional importance: _Thirdly_, we shall enumerate by name certain _specific_ methods of treatment, which have been actually in use in particular epic compositions within the historical elaboration of the type. I. THE GENERAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EPIC TYPE