Assignment
Discuss Paradise lost as an epic
Name: Cheshta Arora
Roll no: 0443
The word epic is, in a strict sense used for works that incorporate following characteristics: a long verse narrative on a serious subject, told in a formal and elevated style, and centered on a heroic or quasi-divine figure on whose actions depends the fate of a tribe, a nation, or (in the instance of John Milton’s Paradise Lost ) the human race. The epic as a genre is usually associated with poetry called epic poetry or a heroic poem. Any poem can be heroic, but the epic is separated from other heroic narratives through its magnitude and style. In simplest terms, epics are very long and written in a highly elevated style.
Epic as genre is of two types: traditional epic and Literary epic. “Traditional epics” also called “folk epics” or “primary epics” were written versions of what had originally been oral poems about a tribal or national hero during a warlike age. The original Homeric epics, sometimes called primary epics, were orally recited by bards and involved ritualistic presentations. The few examples of traditional epic are Iliad and Odyssey that the Greeks ascribed to Homer: the Anglo-Saxon Beowulf; the French Chanson de Roland and the Spanish Poema del Cid in the twelfth century; and the thirteenth century German epic Nibelungenlied. Individual poetics artisans using the traditional form composed “Literary epics”. Of this kind is Virgil’s Latin poem the Aeneid, which later served as a chief literary epic model for Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667).
The Essay on What We Can Learn From The Epic Poem Beowulf
Beowulf, one of the longest poems ever written in the English language is a great epic that allows us as readers to learn many different aspects on life. Although we may not all gather the same information from the poem, it is apparent that everyone will at least learn one thing from Beowulf's epic. As the reader reads this poem, he/she may learn anything from how pride and coward ness can lead to ...
Paradise Lost in turn became a model for John Keats’ fragmentary epic Hyperion.
Aristotle ranked epic only secondary to tragedy while many renaissance critics ranked it as the highest of all genres. M.H.Abrahams states that the literary epic is certainly the most ambitious of poetic enterprises, making immense demand on poet’s knowledge, invention, and skill to sustain the scope, grandeur, and authority of a poem that tends to encompass the world of its day and a large portion of its learning.
Paradise lost is an epic poem composed in the year 1667 by John Milton. Like other renaissance poems, Milton’s Paradise Lost incorporates many different thematic and structural elements from a great many literary genres and modes. It also contains a myriad of specific allusions to major literary texts and exemplary works. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski in her essay ‘The genres of paradise lost’ notes that Paradise Lost’s closest structural affinities are to Virgil’s Aeneid, and that it undertakes in some fashion to define classical heroism in Christian terms. While reading it seems that paradise lost adopts many major elements from other epics like from Homer’s Iliad a tragic epic subject, from Odyssey Satan’s wiles and Craft , from Hesiods Theogeny many aspects of the war between good and evil angels etc.
It seems that Milton was certainly familiar with the classical Homeric epics of the Iliad and the Odyssey, as well as Virgil’s Aeneid. Milton also knew Dante’s Divine Comedy, which, while not technically an epic, has many epic characteristics. Thus ,Milton came to the epic form with the standard conventions associated with an epic, but he also had his own epic in mind.
Milton introduced a complete spectrum of literary forms and genres in Paradise Lost to match the renaissance notion of epic as a compendium of subjects, forms, and styles. Paradise lost incorporates different elements within itself: lyric poetry, including the pastoral mode, as in the descriptions of Paradise, the conversations between the unfallen Adam and Eve, and their joyful prayers to God in the Garden (PL 4.589-735).
The Term Paper on Paradise Lost Milton Lust Satan
Paradise Lost: Milton's Approach To Lust, Sex, Paradise Lost: Milton's Approach To Lust, Sex, And Violence Paradise Lost: Milton's Approach To Lust, Sex, and Violence There is no reason to apply modern theories to Milton if we do not care whether Milton remains alive. However, if we wish him to be more than a historical artifact, we must do more than just study him against the background of his ...
There are also elements of tragedy, as in Book 9 when Milton, preparing his readers for the fall, writes, “I now must change / Those Notes to Tragic,” and continues throughout the book to employ tragic conventions, as when he apostrophizes Eve (PL 9.404-411) and describes the earth’s response to the eating of the fruit (PL 9.782-4 and9.1000-4).
Throughout the poem, Milton makes use of soliloquy, another tragic convention. In addition, even the ten-book structure of the 1667 edition, according to John Leonard, “might owe something to English tragedy, forming five dramatic acts of two books each”. In fact, Milton’s first attempts to write the story of man’s fall took the form of a tragedy that he later rejected in favor of epic. Scott Elledge writes that Milton favored tragedy because of its “affective and curative powers,” which are no less present in Paradise Lost than in his more formal tragedy, Samson Agonistes (Introduction to PL xxvi).
As Barbara Lewalski writes, the incorporation of multiple genres into the poem invites us “to identify certain patterns and certain poems as subtexts for portions of Milton’s poem, and then to attend to the completion or transformation of those allusive patterns as the poem proceeds” (20).
Paradise Lost contains many classical and Renaissance epic features such as: its theme resolves around common epic subjects like war, nationalism, empire, and stories of origin;
It begins in medias res (beginning the story in the middle). Paradise Lost begins with Satan already in Hell, but all the events leading up to it are narrated in Books 5 and 6. Similarly, the creation of the world, of Adam, and of Eve takes place sometime between Satan’s fall and the solidification of his plans for revenge (Books 1-2), but the creation is described in Books 7 and 8. In other words, the poem begins somewhere in the middle of the story, but then goes back and fills in the details.
The Term Paper on Humanism in John Milton’s Paradise Lost Gardenoen
... Latin. In ‘Paradise Lost’, the pastoral takes the central place, several chapters in the middle of the poem. In Milton’s Paradise, familiar pastoral ... is revealed in ‘Paradise Lost’ by imitating epic style of Greek and Roman poets. Starting the epic poem from the invocation of ... humanism as freedom of choice is revealed in ‘Paradise Lost’. Omniscient God, who knows about the coming temptation and the ...
It concerns heavenly and earthly beings and narrates the interactions between them;
It uses conventions such as epic similes, catalogues of people and places, and invocations to a muse. Milton begins by stating his argument, or epic theme and then addresses to the muse his epic question.
Its setting is ample in scale. The scope of Paradise Lost is the entire universe, for it takes place in heaven, on earth, in hell, and in the cosmic space between.
The action of an epic poem involves extraordinary deeds in battle, such as Achilles’ feats in the Trojan War, or a long, arduous, and dangerous journey intrepidly accomplished, such as the wanderings of Odysseus on his back to his homeland, in the face of opposition by some of the gods. Similarly, Paradise lost includes the revolt in heaven by the rebel angels against god, the journey of Satan through chaos to discover the newly created world, and his desperately audacious attempt to outwit God by corrupting humankind.
In these great epics, the gods and other supernatural beings take an active part like for example the Olympian gods in Homer, and the Jehovah, Christ, and the angels in Paradise Lost. These supernatural agents were called machinery in neoclassic age, in the sense that they were part of the literary contrivances of the epic.
An epic poem is a ceremonial performance, and is narrated in a ceremonial style, which is deliberately distanced from ordinary speech and proportioned to the grandeur and formality of the heroic subject and architecture. Hence, in Paradise Lost we see Milton’s grand style-his formal diction and elaborate and stylized syntax, which are in large part modeled on Latin poetry, his sonorous lists of names and wide- ranging allusions, and his imitation of homer’s epic similes and epithets.
However, despite the similarities, there are certain features in Milton’s Paradise lost that do not satisfy the standard conventions of”literary epic”. The hero is a figure of great national or even cosmic importance. In the Iliad, he is the Greek warrior Achilles, who is the son of the sea nymph Thetis; and Virgil’s Aeneas is the son of the goddess Aphrodite. Unlike these classics, Paradise Lost has no easily identified hero. The most Achilles-like character in the poem is Satan, whom Milton surrounds with “epic matter and motivations, epic genre conventions, and constant allusions to specific passages in famous heroic poems” (Barbara Lewalski, Paradise Lost and the Rhetoric of Literary Forms 55).
The Essay on Paradise Lost Satan Milton God
In Paradise Lost, John Milton gives great eminence to the character of Satan. The author divides the characters in his epic poem into two sides: one side under God representing good and eternal providence, and the other side under Satan, representing evil and sin. This creature went from a beautiful, perfect being named Lucifer, living in the light and glory of heaven, to Satan, the prince of ...
Critics and writers such as William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley believed Satan to be the hero of Paradise Lost. Yet the problems inherent in viewing Satan as a hero have led modern critics to reject this idea. As Lewalski writes, “by measuring Satan against the heroic standards, we become conscious of the inadequacy and fragility of all the heroic virtues celebrated in literature, of the susceptibility of them all to demonic perversion” (78).
Another possibility for the hero of Paradise Lost is the Son of God, but although he is an important force in the poem, the story is not ultimately about him. The most likely possibility, therefore, is Adam. Adam resembles Aeneas in many respects: he is the father of a new race, responsible for founding civilization on earth. However, unlike Aeneas, Adam’s primary heroic act is not heroic at all: it is the first act of disobedience.
Unlike the gods and goddesses of classical epics, whose desires and disagreements often mirror those of humans, Milton’s God is invisible and omnipresent, a being who cannot be considered an individual so much as an existence.
The use of different literary forms and genres reflects the depth of Milton’s poetic skills. No poet has ever been able to make such an extensive use of the resources. Milton adopts certain classic conventions of epic while introduces some of the elements himself to create a masterpiece called Paradise Lost.
**********************************************************************
Bibliography:
1) Cambridge Companion to Milton. Ed by Danielson,D
2) A handbook of literary terms by M.H. Abrahams
Online source:
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~milton/reading_room/pl/intro/index.shtml
