CQ - Paradise Lost Book 1

Paradise Lost as a combination of the classical and the Christian traditions

The Book 1 of John Milton’s Paradise Lost establishes the subject matter of the epic poem which is the first disobedience of man and its consequences. The beginning of the poem is an invocation of the Muses and a declaration of the poet’s belief in the superiority of his work.

In the first two sentences of the poem, Milton explains that he will talk of the loss of Paradise when man first disobeyed God by eating a fruit from the forbidden tree and of its restoration to man by Christ. The poet then invokes a “Heav’nly Muse” to inspire him in his work. It is interesting to notice that Milton Christianizes a figure of the classical world by saying that the muse he is invoking is heavenly and that she inspired Moses to write the Ten Commandments and teach it to the Jews, as we can read on lines 6-8.

Milton declares his intention of writing an epic poem that will be above those of the classical authors that inspired him, Homer and Virgil. He wants to try in his poem “Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme.” (16) The fact that he invokes a Christianized Muse to help him achieve this seems to indicated that Milton believe his work to be more important than those who came before, because his inspiration comes from the true God, even if the figure represented is a classical one.

Milton draws together two traditions, the classical and the Christian, to compose his epic poem. He expects to explain the disobedience of man, not only Adam, but all mankind, and “justify the ways of God to men” (26). The juxtaposition of the two traditions shows that Milton acknowledges the greatness of the classical epic poems and is paying attention to the lessons learned with them by writing in the appropriate format, including by evoking the muses in the begining. But he also believes his poem to have a more important subject because he is inspired by the Holy Spirit and that it will make Paradise Lost the greatest epic poem written so far.

Milton, John. The Annotated Milton. Ed. Burton Raffel. New York: Bantam Dell, 2008. E-book.