Paradise Lost is the only known Christian epic ever
written. It was a pet project for Milton and perhaps, his best literary work.
Milton, in his quest to write an epic, planned to go beyond the classical epics
in length, breadth and scale. The scale and tone are grander than the classical
epics. The characters are bigger; for Milton, the fall of Adam and Eve required
the most serious kind of framework. He was a devout Christian and according to
him, his subject matter superseded the matter of ancient epics. The epic, like
traditional epics, begins with an invocation of the poet’s muse to inspire him
in his work. Milton’s style was quite different from his contemporaries. He
chose not to write in rhyme because he associated frivolity and bawdiness with
it. His epic was supposed to be grand in style, so to achieve a degree of
seriousness, he worked hard on the meter of his poetry. He does not put his
arguments in a regular, established form. He writes in long sentences, which
generates the serious and sombre mood of the epic. The invocation in its style
and structure follows the classical epics, but not in its contents. The muse
invoked is unlike the Greek epics. The Greeks invoked nine muses, while Milton
invokes the idea of Godliness in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It resides on
Mount Sinai or Mount Oreb, which, in Christian mythology is the mountain where
god visited Moses. Moses is described as a shepherd – an intended pun.
Literally, he was a shepherd and metaphorically, he was a shepherd for his
people and showed them the right path. Milton prays to the muses to show him
how the heaven and the earth were created out of chaos. He calls his song
“adventurous”, because it will soar higher than average, middling or ordinary
levels. In fact, his song will go beyond even the Aonian Mountain, that is,
Mount Olympus. So, Milton clearly spells out that his epic is going to be
bigger, better and greater than the pagan epics. The telling of a Biblical
story is yet unattempted and Milton takes on this business. He says that the
muse was present since the beginning of the world and so only she can inspire
to tell the tale of the beginning of the earth. Perhaps, the most important
lines of the invocation come in the end. They reveal Milton’s own ideological
positioning and his disappointment in England’s socio-political climate of
those days.
“I may
assert Eternal Providence,
And
justify the ways of God to Men.”
Milton worked on paradise lost for 25 long years. In this
period, England underwent great social and political changes. When paradise
lost was finally published, the monarchy had been restored after eleven years
of parliamentary rule in England.
The theme of the epic resonated the
revolutionary theme of the civil war era, which resulted in a clash between
supporters of the monarchy and the parliament. The parliament supporters – the
Whigs, finally won and England came under parliament’s rule. Milton, himself
was a Whig revolutionary. When the monarchy was restored, the Whigs felt great
despair and disappointment. They felt let down by God Himself; there was almost
a crisis a faith. Milton works on this idea in his epic. His theme is the fall
of Adam and Eve, and before them, the fall of Satan. All three of them were
once a subject of love and affection of God, but they were later punished by
Him. He tried to construct a parallel
between the fall of Satan and godly Adam and Eve and the fall of the Puritan or
the Whig cause. Satan, Adam and Eve question the authority of God in the most
convincing manner possible. They do not follow Him blindly. Milton, too, in his
days, was against the idea of the ‘divine’ rights of the king and thus,
questioned the monarchy’s absolute authority. Satan’s rebellion in the heaven
was a replica of the parliamentary rebellion against Charles I. Milton was a
free thinker and had little respect for state and religious orthodoxies.
William Blake, too, believed firmly in the ideal of freedom and equality, just
like Milton. He, in his interpretation of paradise lost felt that Milton,
unknowingly was on the side of Satan. It is a deeply paradoxical statement as
Milton was a devout Christian, but not an orthodox one. The fall of Adam and
Eve is the proto-type of the puritan cause. It explains why the godly fell from
God’s favour – “justify the ways of God to Men.” – and secondly, holding out
the hope for future. He is trying to find the rationale behind this failure of
the revolution and believes that God must have some greater good in his mind
behind this setback. So, in the beginning itself, Milton sets the tone and pace
of the epic into motion. After understanding the invocation, it becomes clear
that this text is as much about ideological arguments and counter-arguments as
it is about a Biblical account of the fall of mankind.