Chapter Themes of Paradise Lost - Study Guide by John Milton

Milton also invokes a Muse (ll. 1-26) to inspire and instruct him, as was traditional; so too the use of Clio as muse and the pairing of Clio and Urania. Other of the conventions are likewise present. Milton carefully includes a catalogue of the fallen angels (ll.376-505). He also provides extended formal speeches by the main characters (ll. 84-124,157-91,242-70, and 622-62 for major speeches by Satan in Book I). It is on the basis of the eloquence and power of those speeches that much of the claim for Satan's position as 'hero' is based.

Finally, Milton makes frequent use of the epic simile. Four major examples are of interest in Book I; they include the simile of the sea monster (ll.192-), the autumnal leaves (ll.300-), the son/sun (ll.594-), and the swarming bees (ll.768-). One critic identifies that "the Miltonic similes portray knowledge as problematic; they do not suggest we throw away the tools we have and wait for grace as for rain" continues, saying that the similes fulfill a number of tasks: they "convey real information about the tenor, or locate it in an experiential realm" by "stimulating the sensual memory," inducing "in the reader an experience which characterizes the subject". They often prefigure subsequent events in the story. Thus Satan is compared to Leviathan. The similes focus attention upon the act of perception itself and make us aware that we are not looking alone, that we read in the company of those who have read before.

From Homer, certain images have been part of the epic poet's inheritance and equipment. Not only has he felt obliged to introduce them somewhere into his work but to distribute them in the very proportion observed by his predecessors. Beasts, plants, any phenomena used in previous epic simile belonged to him, too, if he could deploy them in a new context. Milton was free to originate novel images from contemporary events or his own personal experience; but Homer's, or Virgil’s, high precedent prescribed the old images as well. Milton's choice of imagery, however, is distinguished from that of other important epic poets of Western Europe by an iron control over, aand a virtual renunciation of, animal similes.

Milton selects an animal image only at the ‘perfect’ opportunity. Milton's imagery of bees direct our mind's eye to winged creatures of the very size that the spirits are to become; they force the reader to contemplate in advance diminutive creatures which, despite their size, we have always liked to imagine do expatiate and confer their state-affairs, exactly what the infernal assembly is going to do. The simile prefigures and is a reflection of other events that are to come later in the story.

Clearly, then, and in spite of some alterations and modifications, Milton did indeed use classical epic conventions. One critic has observed "Milton built his epic out of those of Homer and Virgil, like a cathedral erected out of the ruins of pagan temples whose remains can still be seen".