Milton does, however, use iambic pentameter (the ‘heroic verse’) and repetition to create a sense of rhythm within paradise lost. Milton often repeats an idea 3 times, in order to emphasis its importance. For instance, in lines 64 and 65, Milton uses the words “woe”, “sorrow” and “doleful” to show the audience how awful Satan’s situation is after felling into Chaos.
Milton also makes use of inversions, which means that he phrased words in a certain order to give key positions to key points and ideas. He creates this effect by using semi-colons and commas in the middle of sentences. Alliteration, like iambic pentameter, gives the epic rhythm.
Many style features that Milton has used in Paradise Lost have usually been used in the classic epics. However, one difference that sets Milton’s epic apart from other epics is that Milton asks for the help from the “Heav’nly Muse”, the Holy Spirit, whereas other epics ask for the help from a Greek Muse, one of the creative Muses. By asking for the help of the Holy Spirit, Milton is showing that this epic is to be a Christian epic. It also heightens the subject of Milton’s epic.
Satan if the main focus in Book 1 primarily to show his importance as a character. Satan is the most important character as he was responsible for Man’s fall from Heaven as it was he who tempted Eve.
Milton focuses on Satan in book one as it is here that Satan is portrayed as a hero. Though it is a controversial portrayal (as Satan represents everything that is bad and evil in the world) Satan does possess many of the qualities that a classic hero has; he is able to motivate others through the power of speech. This is shown in line 106, where Satan says to Beelzebub, “All is not lost”, and he is respected amongst many of the Angles, shown when they supported him in his fight against God. Satan is also very arrogant, as many heroes are, as he is convinced that he will be able to beat God, even after admitting that God is Omnipotent.
Satan is also a ‘good’ character to start an epic with as it provokes the interest of the audience. This is because Satan represents the attractive face of evil and how easy it is to take the evil option. In addition to this, it was topical to begin a tale of poem with a rebel and a war, especially since the English Civil War had just recently ended.
Milton wrote paradise lost as he felt that it was his aim or purpose to justify the ways of God to Man, which was why he had previously studied to become a Priest before writing paradise lost.
Milton tells the audience the reason why he created paradise lost in the exordium, which is the summary of content and is a typical feature of classic epics, such as the Odyssey and in plays by Shakespeare.
He also wanted to write a Christian epic in English as he felt that the English language was important enough to be known all over the world, and in order to do that, there would have to be a great English epic. So, Milton wrote an epic about the biggest and most important subjects: Heaven, Hell, God, Satan, Man and His fall from paradise, and initially, the beginning of thime to the Last Judgement.
