ABSTRACT
One could argue that all emotions in primary epic are staged in ways that are outwardly directed and externally motivated. Grief, which many of the people today construe as a private emotion, as something generally kept internally cloistered, is executed in the epical tradition with particular vociferousness. For those today whose expressions of deep emotion have gone inward—have been, quite literally, privatized—would such yowls and gesticulations result in some helpless grimacing and heavy cringing? Yes, very possibly. If there’s something seemingly anti-psychological to these narrative displays, there is good, oral rationale for that—and it’s definitely not because oral individuals are not self-aware. To be sure, melodrama, like any of the other characteristics the people have outlined so far, is hardly restricted to the oral domain.
