Paradise Lost Group

Question:

nishi
nishi
Student
College - Junior

discuss paradise lost as an epic form with refrence to book 1?

how Milton restrains himself within in the characteristics of classical epics while writing Paradise Lost, which is based on the biblical myth of the Fall of Man and Man's First Disobedience to God, with reference to book 1.

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Posted by nishi on Saturday November 8, 2008 at 9:50 PM and tagged with characteristics, paradise lost, theme.

Answers:


  1. hosni Student
    College - Senior

    In Book I, Milton makes a couple of things clear in order for his poem to fit in the classical mould. Like The Iliad or The Aeneid, you have a warlike hero: here, it is controversially Satan. The hero in question has companions and these, like him, are soldiers. There is the shadow of war. A fierce battle has been fought and the prospect of another. Book I is set after the battle in Heaven but that's not important. With respect to this point, you may refer for instance to Virgil's Aeneid where the reader knows about the war in Troy but has an account of it only in Book II and III. Up to now we have the warrior hero. The epic hero needs a quest of some sort. Satan's quest is like that of Aeneas or Ulysses: it's a journey. This journey conforms to the traditional epic form in a MAJOR POINT: the passage through the Underworld. Of course as far as I remember, this passage is not cited in Book I, BUT it's an element of the quest prepared for in Book I. Another aspect of traditional epics is the war council. There are war councils in The Iliad as well as in The Aeneid. And for how Milton restrained himself to the Biblical myth, he took the different components of the myth and shaped his plot. He needed a mighty warrior. It couldn't be Adam so it had to be Satan and so on. Hence, Milton really sticked to the traditional form of the epic.    

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    Posted by hosni on Monday November 10, 2008 at 1:26 AM