Compare And Contrast Milton And Paradise Lost

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John Milton’s “Paradise Lost” is one of the most well known epics written during the Renaissance. Milton expresses great feeling into his epic, because he felt as if it connected directly to himself during his lifetime. The epic was written when he was unofficially exiled from Cambridge, and the exile of Adam and Eve from Paradise is a comparison in the epic. John Milton uses epic conventions in “Paradise Lost” as he attempts to justify the ways of God to men.
Milton believed that everything had been predetermined by God/the Holy Spirit and not through free will. The fall of Satan and his following angels had been planned previously by God, so that man’s first disobedience (the fruit being eaten by Adam) would occur, then the son of God would be sent to die as the savior of man for all who believed and repented their sins to God. Milton’s beliefs of predestination are shown during the time between Eve eating the fruit and Adam eating the fruit. Adam discusses with Eve how God created them, so he could uncreate them. He also explains that God probably would not do that, so their fall had …show more content…

Homer uses Zeus’s nine daughters, the daughters of wit and charm , as his muse of the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey”; Virgil uses a similar muse to Homer, since his muse is a goddess for the “Aeneid”; Dante Alighieri used his first love Beatrice as his muse for “Divine Comedy” specifically for the cantica “Inferno”. Milton uses the Holy Spirit as his muse for “Paradise Lost”. The Holy Spirit is a larger and more powerful figure than the muse for epics written by Homer, Virgil, and Dante. Milton wrote “Paradise Lost” in modern English during the Renaissance. He surpassed his classical models (Homer, Virgil, and Dante) when he chose to write his epic using the Holy Spirit for inspiration. Milton’s epic is closer to the Bible and other biblical literature than any other piece of modern English

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