The Western European Renaissance Verse Epic With Focus On John Milton’s Paradise Lost

What is the Renaissance?

The Renaissance peaked in Italy during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Renaissance thought was based on an all-embracing confident world-view before religious conflict arose and brought about the Reformation. The Renaissance emphasised Man as the kernel of the Universe, half earthly and half divine, his body and soul formed a microcosm enabling him to understand and control Nature, and aspire to the comprehension of God. Mankind should, furthermore, approach various aspects of Truth through different disciplines the spiritual through Theology, intellectual through Philosophy, imagination through Poetry and social aspects through Law. Wisdom should be achieved through human reason.

During the Renaissance, humanism was influential. It was based on the belief of a Creator and a divine mission of Christ. Italian humanism was essentially a literary and scholarly movement, whose principal objective was to study and imitate classical literature. Humanists praised the solitary life as the only one possible to achieve true scholarship. They studied ancient history, moral philosophy and rhetoric, which involved training to defend opposing views, a skill that could also be used for political purposes, and several humanists were politically influential in Florence. This was the time of the great benefactors the de Medici family in Florence, who supported architecture and art. Another well-known political figure in Florence was Machiavelli, author of The Prince. However, he was not a humanist and rose to power after the Florentine humanist golden era had come to an end.

The revival of classical literature and studies began in Italy in the late Middle Ages and spread to Northern Europe and Britain in the sixteenth century. There was an upsurge of energy, curiosity and creative effort. The arts blossomed. In no other period have man s opinions and theories about nature and structure of the universe and the role of man in it, brought about such profound and far-reaching changes.

The Renaissance has been characterised as the start of the modern era: humanist, individualistic, man-centred, outward-looking, as well as innovative in science and thought. But it must not be forgotten that the Renaissance reached Northern Europe after the Protestant Reformation, which was also individualistic but theo-centric, that is, it put God at the centre, rather than humanist, which put man at the centre. The Reformation re-established the role of conscience and was more focused on analysing divine revelation in the Bible rather than in the world. As a consequence the Reformation also instigated a new morality and a new social system. The suggested conflict between Catholics and Protestants is, as we shall see, also evident in John Milton s religious argument.

The Classical literary epic and echoes in Renaissance literature?

The Renaissance looked back to the ancient Greek and Roman epics. The epic was allegedly established by Homer and the most well-known classic epics have been ascribed to Homer and are dated to circa 1000 BC. The Iliad, with the hero Achilles, recounts the story of the wars between the Greeks and the Trojans. The Odyssey relates the adventures of Odysseys, the hero in the epic, during his return from the Trojan wars back to Ithaca and all the hazards he encounter on the way. In modern literature Homer s epic pattern has been most explicitly used by James Joyce in Ulysses, published in 1922, with Bloom as Odysseus and Stephen in the role of his son Telemachus.

A poet of the Roman Empire, Virgil, became the main classical influence during the Renaissance. Virgil was the first national poet and wrote the epic the Aenid ca 30-20 BC, which records and celebrates Aeneas and his foundation of the Roman Empire, after many hazardous adventures following the Trojan wars and the fall of Troy. Virgil s influence was evident in, for example, Dante s Divina Commedia, the Divine Comedy, written between 1307-21 in Italian, not in Latin. It is a personal epic, like a spiritual autobiographical Aenid. Another Renaissance Italian epic is Tasso s Gerusalemme Liberata, Liberated Jerusalem, from 1575, which tells the story of the Christian recovery of Jerusalem as a result of the First Crusade. It is a Christian rather than a nationalistic epic. It celebrates the victory of Christian conquest and not that of any particular country.

Beowulf, recently published in a highly acclaimed new English version by Seamus Heaney, is the longest surviving poem in Old English. It was written in West Saxon dialect around the year 1000 and set in what is now Denmark, during the migrations of the fifth and sixth centuries. It is an epic recording of the great deeds of Beowulf in his youth and maturity in his defence of a Danish kingdom. Closer to Milton s time in England, Spenser s The Faerie Queen, published in the 1590s, is an allegorical nationalistic epic, befitting an author who served the English colonial service in Ireland. In Paradise Lost Milton borrowed from the classics as well as from the Renaissance Italian epics: Homer s heroic epics Odysseys and the Iliad, Virgil s Aenid, Dante s Divina Commedia and Tasso s Gerusalemme Liberato. After having mentioned several works that can be described as epic, now let s look closer at what an epic really is.

What is an epic?

An epic is a long narrative poem, that is, it tells a story on a grand scale, about the deeds of warriors and heroes. An epic incorporates myth, legend, folk tale and history, which is often of national significance. An epic is usually set in a heroic age of the past and embodies its country s early history and expresses its values.

There are two kinds of epic: a) primary, which is oral or of primitive origin. For example the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Beowulf were all written down after they were first created. Common features in primary epics are: a central figure of heroic even superhuman calibre, dangerous journeys, various misadventures, strong element of the supernatural, repetition of fairly long passages of narrative or dialogue, and elaborate greetings and digressions.

b) a literary epic, on the other hand, was written down from the beginning, for example Virgil s Aenid, Tasso s Gerusalemme Liberato and Milton s Paradise Lost. From the early thirteenth century literary epic was the main form of the two.

The epic conventionally begins with the poet announcing his theme, invoking the help of a muse, and asking her an epic question, with the reply as the beginning of the story. He then launches his action in medias res, meaning in the middle of things. This action concerns a hero, a man of stature and significance, for example Odysseus, king of Ithaca or Aeneas, founder of the Roman Empire. In the course of the story the hero performs many notable deeds, one of them is most often to descend into the underworld. The major characters are described in great detail and many of them have dignified set speeches to reveal their characters. The gods are often involved in epic stories and usually take part in great battles. Finally, the epic poet adopts a dignified, passionate and elaborate style that is suitable to his theme. The narrator of the epic, the voice telling the story, guarantees the truth of the story that is being told. An epic presents a certain kind of a human problem of hopeless or near hopeless courage. An epic may arise from an impulse to relieve the tension between individuals and their world, when different kinds of individuality are trying to establish dominance, a struggle that is evident in Paradise Lost.

There are some common poetic features in epics, which are also demonstrated in Paradise Lost. An epic simile is an extended simile, that is, a longer descri ption of something that is similar to something else. An epic simile is sometimes twenty lines long, in which the comparisons made are elaborated in detail. One such example can be found in Paradise Lost, Book IX, lines 634-644: (1. on handout)

as when a wondering fire,

Compact of unctuous[oily, greasy, ME anointing] vapour, which the night

Condenses, and the cold environs round,

Kindled through agitation to a flame,

Which oft, they say, some evil spirit attends

Hovering and blazing with the delusive light,

Misleads the amazed night-wanderer from his way

To bogs and mires, and oft through pond or pool,

There swallowed up and lost, from succour[reinforcements, rescue forces] far.

So glistened the dire[ominous] snake.

Another common epic feature is formula, which is a group of words that express a commonly repeated idea or action and can fit into several contexts. Formulae may vary in length from a noun plus an adjective, for example swift-footed Achilles , to several lines, such as a descri ption of a hero preparing for battle. The epic expresses a delight in the physical world, demonstrated, for instance, in painstaking descri ptions of arms, clothing and ships.

An epic poem consists of a lot of physical action: war, battles, and great deeds carried out by active martial heroes. The pattern of a classical or Renaissance epic features the struggle of a strong man, the hero, against seemingly overwhelming opposition, followed by his eventual victory. The events are coherently and rationally explained.

Italian classical and Renaissance literary influence on Milton s writing?

John Milton (1608-74) was an Italianite Englishman because of his literary taste and critical orientation, which were predominately classical and Italian. In a Renaissance manor he set out on a Grand Tour to the European continent, to France and Italy. At that time Italy was living on its past while France had taken over the role as European cultural centre. During his trip to Italy he found both intellectual delight and an appreciative audience for his Italian verses that he wrote as a young man. Tuscany is alluded to in Book I of Paradise Lost as Etrurian shades . It has also been suggested that Milton s Hell has borrowed details from a volcanic region near Naples and that Paradise resembles the garden at Villa d Este at Tivoli, close to Rome. Milton saw the classics through Italian eyes. Italy, he thought, had accommodated the classics to contemporary needs: the doctrines of Christendom and the social and political values of modern Europe.

Like other Renaissance critics Milton wanted to define issues of literary technique. He was concerned about the grammatical, syntactical limitations of the vernacular language, in his case English, due to speech-rhyme and metre, what we also call prosody. Blank verse was preferred to rhymed verse because it linked to the vernacular language rather than to Latin, the religious lingua franca of the time. That the definition and distinction of genre was a relevant issue for discussion is, as we shall see, obvious in Paradise Lost, which uses epic features to turn the tables on the initially assumed hero. A matter close to Milton s heart was the question of possible moral or psychological effects of poetry and its subservience to national and religious ends.

He was attracted to Italy because he thought it the epicentre of humanitas, the school of classical humanism and indeed of all the arts of civilization , as he allegedly said himself. Milton was a Christian humanist, clinging on to Renaissance values at a time when its influence was diminishing. The Renaissance idealisation of individualism, rationality and intellectualism were aspects that appealed greatly to Milton, but also brought him worries in his effort to combine these with humble Christian faith.

Nevertheless, Milton was politically opposed to the Roman Catholic Church and to any attempts to Romanise his own Church. He defended Presbyterianism on his return to England and professed austere morality, but created a bad reputation for himself by writing pamphlets in defence of divorce on grounds of mismatch of mind and spirit, rather than adultery.

He defended individual liberties based on the belief that all men naturally were born free, being the image of God . By 1651 he was blind and wrote about his disability in the moving sonnet On Blindness. He attacked the monarchy and argued for the killing of Charles I. The Protectorate created under Oliver Cromwell, whom Milton supported, crumbled and the monarchy was restored in 1660. Milton s books were burned and he narrowly escaped execution. After having been involved in politics for many years, disillusionment with the development in England brought him back to poetry. Paradise Lost was written during these tumultuous years. With Paradise Lost Milton wanted to do for his country what Homer, Virgil and Tasso had done for theirs.

Renaissance thought and Christian values in Paradise Lost?

The tradition of classical epic is hard to negotiate with Christian doctrine, as its very conventions embody a pagan view of life. Milton consciously imitates the literary conventions of classical and Renaissance epic, but he also transforms them by introducing a moral and theological content that was strongly conditioned by Reformation piety and personal disillusionment resulting from the English civil war and its political aftermath. He observes basic principles of the heroic poem but adopts them to his own conception of the nature and limitations of heroic virtue.

Milton took a practical attitude rather than theoretical view on Renaissance issues, which was linked to his concern for tolerance and peace in the English Church and State. Presbyterian piety is neutralised as Milton merges Calvinist and humanist thought in Paradise Lost. Allusions in the poem to spiritual ancestors of seventeenth-century Protestants an their struggle against corrupted and distorted Christianity is visible in the poem. (2. on the handout)

By falsities and lies the greatest part

Of mankind they corrupted to forsake .(I, 367-368)

Further on he declares in a spirit of defeat, not victory: (3. on handout)

For those the race of Israel oft forsook

Their living strength, and unfrequented left

His righteous altar, bowing lowly down

To bestial gods for which their heads as low

Bowed down in battle, suck before the spear

Of despicable foes .(I, 432-37)

There is an epic conflict between Man and God. There is also a contradiction between suffering and omnipotent Deity. Christian belief must overcome those doubts. That is one major driving force in Paradise Lost. It is now high time to take a closer look at the poem.

General aim of Paradise Lost?

Paradise Lost was written over four or five years, and was completed in 1665. The time span of the poem is circa 33 days, the number signifying pleasure. The Fall and Judgement occur on day 32. On day 33 Adam is shown visions of the consequences of the Fall and of the redemptive history, and when he himself leaves Paradise to enter that history. Number 33 signifies man s earthly suffering and the suffering of Christ. It is also the numerological basis for Dante s Divina Commedia. Man s days are literally numbered. Man in Paradise Lost signifies the human race. The plot spans all time and extends physically to the whole Earth and beyond, to Heaven and Chaos. In the fable of Paradise Lost, only crucial events temptation and fall, sentence of judgement and expulsion from paradise derive directly from Genesis. Everything else is the poet s own contribution.

Milton s arguments are declared at the beginning of each book in Paradise Lost. The Prologues of Books I, III, VII and Book IX discuss overall issues relevant to the task that the poet has set himself. The contradictions and disparities of the first one suggest the tensions between epic form and Christian matter. The second prologue deals with Christian truth. The prologue of Book VII discusses poetic inspiration as granted by God. The last prologue, in Book IX, disqualifies the epic by applying the mode of tragedy to the epic theme of heroism. Christian patience and martyrdom in the end makes epic values unworthy. Milton said that the whole Subject is Man s disobedience, and the loss thereupon of Paradise . Thereby Milton adopts Renaissance terms like argument, proposition and theme to describe the poet s subject, which establishes the action. Milton s intention in Paradise Lost was to create the imitation of an action to describe the Fall of Man . The Fall is intertwined with regeneration because the crisis includes man s repentance as well as his transgression, that is reconciliation of Adam and Eve after their quarrel. The crisis or climax, what we call peripeteia, in the Renaissance meaning is a change of state , not the reversal of intention . The fundamental change of state in Paradise Lost is Man s lapse from innocence to the state of Sin. But not until Book VII does the plot shift definitely to the poem s main subject, the relations between God and Man. Man has lost control of Reason, and therefore suffers the Fall.

Paradise Lost is full of contradictions, oxymorons like darkness visible , contradictory images of God as loving dove-like Creator (I, 21), but also as harsh punisher, the almighty power flaming from the ethereal sky (I, 44-45). The greatest contradiction attempts to celebrate Christian values in a form designed to celebrate its opposite, epic virtues. If we believe the epic, then we are untrue to Christian doctrine. The poem offers a choice between the two. Imagination always lures as a constant threat against the ability to make a rational choice. Paradise is proof of God s Creation. Milton condemns pride because he was himself attracted to it and in Paradise Lost one prominent theme is the contention between pride and humility.

Epic elements in Paradise Lost?

Paradise Lost is a sharp critique of the epic values demonstrated in classical epics. It is as much anti-epic as it is epic and inverts many epic norms, which is not apparent until halfway into the poem. The real conflict in Paradise Lost is not between narrator and dramatic voices, but between Christian and epic norms, which are obviously irreconcilable in Milton s moral humanity, and emphasised in the poem by making Satan an archetypal warrior.

Repeatedly Milton asks us to choose between contrasting epic and Christian contexts. The choice is between a Satan who is coping heroically and a wretch who is unable to cope. But in Christian doctrine Satan could never rise without God s permission: (4. on handout)

So stretched out huge in length the arch-fiend lay

Chained on the burning lake, nor ever thence

Had risen or heaved his head, but that the will

And high permission of all-ruling heaven

Left him at large to his own dark designs,

That with reiterated crimes he might

Heap on himself damnation, while he sought

Evil to others, and enraged might see

How all his malice served but to bring forth

Infinite goodness, grace and mercy shown

On man by him seduced, but on himself

Treble confusion, wrath and vengeance poured. (I, 209-20)

In other words, no contest is really possible. Yet, Books I and II argue that Satan is God s potent adversary. Going against epic form Christian faith must in the poem convince the reader, contrary to belief, that Satan is rising and that God graciously and mercifully permits Satan to reduce mankind. In that instant Satan seems like a superhuman epic hero compared to the passive angels (I, 340-1).

Paradise Lost touches on epic battle in Book I and II, but later suggestion of battle is only deflated. For example, the promised duel between Satan and Gabriel fails to take place, because God has already decided on the issue at stake. (5. on handout)

With violence of this conflict, had not soon

The eternal to prevent such horrid fray

Hung forth in heaven his golden scales

Betwixt Astrea [Virgo] and the Scorpion sign

Wherein all things created first he weighed,

The pendulous round earth with balanced air

In counterpoise, now ponders all events .(IV, 995-1001).

Milton consequently adapts classical epic form for antithetical purposes, that is, in order to reach a different conclusion, to suit his model based on Christian values. Furthermore, to the same effect, the epic is turned to mock-epic because Hell is lowly and Satan becomes un-heroic during his journey of trial. Satan s meeting with his progeny Raphael, Death, is a comedy of mistaken identity disguised as epic confrontation: (6. on handout)

Whence and what art thou, execrable[detestable] shape,

That darest, though grim and terrible, advance

Thy miscreated front athwart[in opposition to] my way

To yonder[over there] gates? Through them I mean to pass

That be assured without leave asked of thee:

Retire, or taste thy folly, and learn by proof,

Hell-born, not to contend with spirits of heaven. (II, 681-87).

Satan s inconsistent absurdity of high style and low matter is also mock-epic. Satan gradually looks ridiculous rather than a hero. The scene of the Heavenly Council, when the fate of mortals comes from the mouths of the gods, is a classical epic device. Satan s intervention and rebellion in Books V and VI mock heroic battle, first by exaggerating it then by belittling it. Every part thus far has in one way or another questioned its own epic pretensions. The end of Book VI ends Milton s classical epic. The military climax usually at the end of an ancient epic comes halfway through in Paradise Lost, when it is no longer a climax but an anachronistic interruption of a plot that has already moved on to other issues.

Is there an epic hero in Paradise Lost?

Milton transforms Satan as he transforms conventional epic images into archetypes of true and false heroic virtue, embodying spiritual and carnal, Christian and secular ideals of heroism. But he is not the epic hero of the poem. But there has been critical contention about that matter. For example, the poet John Dryden considered Satan the hero. A critic in our own time Stanley Fish, in his book Surprised by Sin, argues that Milton lays traps for the reader to believe that Satan is the hero. Another critic, Robert Crossman, in Reading Paradise Lost, has claimed that because Milton perceived the contradiction between epic form and Christian values, he solved the matter by making Satan his epic hero. In Books I and II Satan is, indeed, cast in the mould of an epic hero, demanding positive response to human virtues tested through time, such as courage, eloquence and self-esteem. Satan, who is wicked and fallen, can then count on certain indulgence from his likewise audience, us as readers.

Initially Satan resembles bad heroes of Renaissance drama, for example Macbeth: a great sinner who incarnates on a heroic scale our own worse nature, and suffers hugely for his villainy. Satan is portrayed as human, although he is not. The reliable narrator introduces Satan by denouncing him. (7. on handout)

Who first seduced them to that foul revolt?

The infernal serpent he it was, whose guile[deceit]

Stirred up with envy and revenge, deceived

The mother of mankind, what time his pride

Had cast him out from heaven, with all his host

Of rebel angels, by whose aid aspiring

To set himself in glory above his peers,

He trusted to have equalled the most high,

If he opposed and with ambitious aim

Against the throne and monarchy of God

Raised impious war in heaven and battle proud

With vain attempt. (I, 33-44)

In this instant we are not convinced by the harsh judgement. Especially not as Satan in Book I admits he is bad but with certain epic and tragic virtues. (8. on handout)

If though beest he but O how fallen! How changed

From him, who in the happy realms of light

Clothed with transcendent brightness didst outshine

Myriads though bright .(I, 84-87)

Satan defends himself by attributing also to God his wicked traits. What the epic voice denounces as villainous Satan defends as heroic. Book IV shows that Satan s own spiritual condition creates Hell wherever he is, and that Hell is the creature s voluntary self-exile from his Creator. Eventually Satan fails as epic hero. The fundamental irony of the poem puts Satan in his proper place by the poet.

Milton managed to combine the heroic with a system of Christian values, although the heroic epic promotes worldly triumph while the Christian theme is one of worldly defeat as the necessary prelude to spiritual victory, clearly anti-epic values. The apparent insolubility of this paradox produces in the reader the confusion that is the most reliable impression of Hell, the hateful siege of contraries, as Satan calls it. Only after the reader has been thoroughly exposed to the delusions and self-contradictions of the traditional heroic stance is the reader led to a radically different conception of heroism embodied in the fallen but repentant Adam and Eve.

In Renaissance language Adam is the epic hero of Paradise Lost. Patience in the exercise of saints and sanctification itself involves the isolation of the hero as a person separate from God. The crucial decision, the crisis of spiritual battle, must take place within the conscience of the individual, in moral solitude, not on a battlefield. Therefore the poet must isolate the hero to portray his moral struggle. Milton implements divine justice in for example the punishment of Adam and Satan they fail heroic virtue.

Adam and Eve s repentance is the heroic act, not Satan s destruction. Adam has in the end learned wisdom: (9. on handout)

Henceforth I learne, that to obey is best,

And love with feare the only God, to walk

As in his presence, ever to observe

His providence, and on him sole depend,

Merciful over all his works, with good

Still overcoming evil, and by small

Accomplishing great things, by things deemed weak.

Subverting worldly strong, and worldly wise.

By simply meek that suffering for truth s sake

Is fortitude to highest victory .(XII, 561-570)

Milton s visionary poem and Christian epic offers us in its close, in the example of Adam, a clear rejection of the comic sweep and heroic grandeur with which the poem began. It has led to a complete reversal of the worldly epic norms in Adam s exemplary affirmation of humility and obedience to God s will. But Milton would argue that Adam has chosen the Christian road to individual progress Milton s perfect combination of Renaissance individual free will and Christian morality.

Key names and titles (excluding references to Milton)

Homer. The Iliad,

The Odyssey ca 1000 BC

Virgil. The Aenid. 30-20 BC

Beowulf. Ca 1000 AD

Dante. Divina Commedia. (The Divine Comedy) 1307-21

Tasso. Gerusalemme Liberata. 1575

Edmund Spenser. Faerie Queen. 1590s.

James Joyce. Ulysses. 1922