Page 173 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes The classical influences in his work can be clearly delineated: Homer, Ovid, but especially Virgil.
Shakespeare was the leading playwright of his day, and there are some references to his works in
Milton’s own poetry. The style and structure of the Spencer’s “The Faerie Queen,” was another
influence on Paradise Lost. It was one of only a few books that were owned by the Milton’s during
John’s upbringing. Milton died from “gout” in 1674 and was buried in the Church of St. Giles in
London.

19.2 Paradise Lost-I: Importance of Prologue

19.2.1 Prologue and Invocation

Milton opens Paradise Lost by formally declaring his poem’s subject: humankind’s first act of
disobedience toward God, and the consequences that followed from it. The act is Adam and Eve’s
eating of the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, as told in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. In
the first line, Milton refers to the outcome of Adam and Eve’s sin as the “fruit” of the forbidden tree,
punning on the actual apple and the figurative fruits of their actions. Milton asserts that this original
sin brought death to human beings for the first time, causing us to lose our home in paradise until
Jesus comes to restore humankind to its former position of purity.
Milton’s speaker invokes the muse, a mystical source of poetic inspiration, to sing about these subjects
through him, but he makes it clear that he refers to a different muse from the muses who traditionally
inspired classical poets by specifying that his muse inspired Moses to receive the Ten Commandments
and write Genesis. Milton’s muse is the Holy Spirit, which inspired the Christian Bible, not one of
the nine classical muses who reside on Mount Helicon—the “Aonian mount” of I.15. He says that
his poem, like his muse, will fly above those of the Classical poets and accomplish things never
attempted before, because his source of inspiration is greater than theirs. Then he invokes the Holy
Spirit, asking it to fill him with knowledge of the beginning of the world, because the Holy Spirit
was the active force in creating the universe.
Milton’s speaker announces that he wants to be inspired with this sacred knowledge because he
wants to show his fellow man that the fall of humankind into sin and death was part of God’s
greater plan, and that God’s plan is justified.

Analysis

The beginning of Paradise Lost is similar in gravity and seriousness to the book from which Milton
takes much of his story: the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The Bible begins with the story
of the world’s creation, and Milton’s epic begins in a similar vein, alluding to the creation of the
world by the Holy Spirit. The first two sentences, or twenty-six lines, of Paradise Lost are extremely
compressed, containing a great deal of information about Milton’s reasons for writing his epic, his
subject matter, and his attitudes toward his subject. In these two sentences, Milton invokes his muse,
which is actually the Holy Spirit rather than one of the nine muses. By invoking a muse, but
differentiating it from traditional muses, Milton manages to tell us quite a lot about how he sees his
project. In the first place, an invocation of the muse at the beginning of an epic is conventional, so
Milton is acknowledging his awareness of Homer, Virgil, and later poets, and signaling that he has
mastered their format and wants to be part of their tradition. But by identifying his muse as the
divine spirit that inspired the Bible and created the world, he shows that his ambitions go far beyond
joining the club of Homer and Virgil. Milton’s epic will surpass theirs, drawing on a more fundamental
source of truth and dealing with matters of more fundamental importance to human beings. At the
same time, however, Milton’s invocation is extremely humble, expressing his utter dependence on
God’s grace in speaking through him. Milton thus begins his poem with a mixture of towering ambition
and humble self-effacement, simultaneously tipping his hat to his poetic forebears and promising to
soar above them for God’s glorification.

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