Precis for "Virgil and Tragedy"

          Philip Hardie in his essay "Virgil and Tragedy" (10/21/12) claims that "in short, the Aeneid is a problematic text" because it is difficult to describe as a tragedy specifically (313). Hardie examines the Virgilian epic and some of its criticisms specifically to decide whether the Aeneid could be classified as a tragedy, or what tragic aspects it contains. The author looks to give the reader a lot of insight into the poem's tragic qualities, but not necessarily define the Aeneid specifically as a tragedy itself. This information is useful to those who have read the epic, but also to those who are looking at the tragedy genre alone, as it pertains to the complexity of defining a tragedy itself as well as defining the Aeneid as one.
          This essay did not particularly convince me that the Aeneid was, or was not a tragedy, which is what I believe the author intended; however, it did give me a lot of information about what 'tragedy' means, and how it could be defined in terms of the Aeneid. The author looks at tragic heroes in the story, tragic small stories within the text itself, and also the tragedy of personal loss and grief for the characters. In describing these, I felt that the author, at times, tended to go off on tangents about specific details of his points, which made the essay somewhat difficult to read. Overall, not my favorite, but brings up an interesting debate about defining the Aeneid and its significance as an epic.