Chapter Themes of Paradise Lost - Study Guide by John Milton

"In the course of Milton's epic his fallen archangel conceives and executes an enterprise of conquest and destruction closely resembling that of the conventional epic hero. Nevertheless, for a seventeenth- century Protestant, this apparently heroic exploit should have fitted into a familiar ethical category, a pattern already delineated and condemned by theologians in their discussions of pagan virtue."

This subject preoccupied both Luther and Calvin. That Milton wanted his readers to be forced to face the problem of Satan seeming heroic is certain. Satan is, after all, an angel. He was a mighty angel in Heaven. In order for us to see the power of God, it is necessary that Satan also be powerful; it is important that Satan, a parody of God, be viewed as an eloquent, bold being, one possessing superhuman strength, extraordinary martial prowess, fortitude, and other attributes. But Milton would also expect his readers to perceive fact from fancy; he would expect us to see through Satan's seeming greatness to his core of evil and pride and petty acts of revenge. That is, after all, part of the test. If we perceive Satan's real villainy, we indeed show ourselves sufficient to avoid it ourselves.

Perhaps it is worth noting that evil is necessarily charismatic and superficially displays all the qualities of strength and ‘wisdom’ that good does. Milton chooses to portray precisely such an evil to begin with, only to have it undermined progressively by the wisdom of angels. His implication is that we should be faced with an evil that is tangibly appealing and a good that is hard to define and therefore to appreciate in its benign and mystical greatness. The poet establishes that good is not the easy option and does so with such success that critics have latched upon the issue of Satan’s appeal without recourse to the fact that Milton would have assumed a greater degree of Christian understanding in his reader than is now generally the case. It is hard to believe that Milton was, as has been suggested by some, "of the Devil’s party", intentionally or no. Yet the dispute continues apace.

The next three characteristics of the epic listed above are hardly items of debate. The setting is indeed vast in scope, ranging from Heaven to Hell and to the Earth. The action surely consists of deeds of great valour requiring superhuman courage. And there are supernatural forces (gods, angels, and demons) at work throughout the poem. One question may occur in regard to the second of these: is it valour and courage that Satan and his followers showed in fighting the War in Heaven with God?

The reader may have a difficulty conceiving Satan as courageous and valourous. But it may be the words themselves and modern connotations connected with them that cause the difficulty. When examined more closely, there seems to be little difficulty: a definition of courage from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries meant "anger, wrath; haughtiness, pride".

Another of characteristic of the epic, the use of an elevated style, may also surely be acknowledged in Paradise Lost:

"Milton… needed a style that could at once invoke and revamp the classical tradition. I shall not discuss the controversies over Milton's 'Latinate' style but only point out some things that have not been said but which help to give the impression of a classical style in Paradise Lost. Milton's method of elevating the language is the common one suggested by Aristotle: vary, within reason, the mode of normal speech by using unfamiliar words, figures, unusual forms and spellings, and, most of all, metaphors."

Critics such as William Empson, Cleanth Brooks, T.S. Eliot, and others, have attacked Milton's style. Milton justified the way in which he wrote Paradise Lost in the preface added to the later 1668 editions: