Milton’s Christian Epic—Lily Caswell

In my first semester of Honors, we had to read the Iliad and the Aeneid so I became very familiar with how the traditional epic poem is supposed to be structured. It always began with an invocation of the muse, it tells the story of a certain person or group of people, and it tends to have superhuman deeds and great adventures. 

Milton writes “…Fast by the oracle of God, I thence / Invoke thy aid to my advent’rous song…” (Milton, lines 12-13) Paradise Lost tells the story of the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I’m going to go out on a proverbial limb here and say that it probably does contain great adventures considering it is about the fall of man and begins with the story of Lucifer’s fall from Heaven. And given the fact that Milton spends quite a bit of time describing in detail all of Satan’s legions of beasts that are the ancient idols of Canaan and surrounding areas, I think there will definitely be some superhuman deeds.

I commented on Emory’s and Isabelle’s posts.

Comments

  1. IsabelleSeptember 7, 2021 at 8:53 AM

    You're absolutely right. The introducing lines remind me of "O the rage of Achilles!" (Homer). Although, I'm not sure this epic would contain a "hero" per say. Other than that, I agree.

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