| dc.description.abstract | This study attempts to examine the classification of Milton's Paradise Regained as an epic and to ascertain whether this classification contributes to an understanding of the poem's meaning. The first difficulty in such a study arises in the difficulty of defining the dynamic genre epic. One of the characteristics of the epic is its choric quality, its way of speaking for the people of its ager and it expresses that choric quality in its reflection of the artistic problems, mores, and philosophy of the period that produced it. Every period which has produced epics has contributed its own peculiar characteristics to the form. Al though the poets of the seventeenth century considered epic the highest form of poetry and felt obligated to prove that a story from biblical literature could be reproduced in that form, the literary and religious philosophies of the period made the production of such an epic very difficult. One of the difficulties arose in the lack of understanding by many of the poets of the medium. There are two kinds of epic characteristics: the incidental epic characteristics, which derive from the customs and methods of composition of the periods that produced the first epics and which serve to identify the author's intention and to place the work in the epic frame of reference, and the intrinsic epic characteristics, which are exalted subject, exalted method of presentation, and integrity of subject and union of theme and form. Milton was meeting the seventeenth century epic challenge when he wrote Paradise Regained, and he made evident his epic intention by using incidental epic requirements. He did not neglect, however, to develop his poem carefully according to the intrinsic epic characteristics. In The Reason for Church Government Milton discusses the superiority of biblical literature over classical, classifying the Book of Job as a brief epic. Those portions of Paradise Regained which deal with Satan contain many of the incidental epic characteristics while those which concern Christ lack many of them. These latter portions resemble the form of the Book of Job. Because the Hebraic-based epic form is used for the material relating to Christ and the classical epic for that relating to Satan, Milton's use of the epic form may be taken as an expression of his comparative judgment on the two literatures, biblical and classical, and as part of his rejection of classical learning. This judgment is further understood when Milton's Satan and Christ and their conflict are compared to the usual classical epic heroes and their conflicts. Here again, Satan conforms to the classical standard, whereas Chris t meets a standard which Milton refers to in the opening lines of his poem as "above epic." Consequently, it can be seen that Paradise Regained, written to meet the seventeenth-century need for a biblical epic, meets and fulfills that intention. | |
