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Anuska Saha

Semester 3

English Honours

UID No: 0304200114

University Roll No: 202017-11-0365

University Registration No: 017-1211-3602-20

Course: CC7

An Analysis of Milton’s Narrative Style: The Invocation

The mid-17th-century, a period that had divided England by political and religious

debates, witnessed the advent of a prodigious figure whose poetic vision would not only

encapsulate best the turbulence of his time but also revolutionize the epic genre as was

known to his time. Paradise Lost, as Milton had intended to be, is a poetic retelling of the

story of the Fall of Man as narrated in the Bible. Published first in 1667 in ten volumes and

later in 1674 with two supplementary volumes and minor revisions, Milton’s epic poem

adheres to the ideal structure laid down by his classical predecessors, Homer and Virgil. With

Satan as the overpowering protagonist at its center, the action in Book 1 of Paradise Lost

begins in medias res – in the manner of the traditional epic – with an invocation to a higher

divine power.

Milton’s invocation captures brilliantly his excellence as a poet while subtly hinting at his

ambiguities as a devout Christian. Even in remaining true to the convention, Milton gives the

epic device new dimensions and meaning with his refined style, lexical choices, intelligent

allocation of Biblical connotations, and ingenious juxtaposing of the abstract with the

material. In his essay, “The Opening of Paradise Lost”, David Daiches notes in the passage “a

single movement in its intellectual and emotional pattern” and in its lyrical appeal (Daiches
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55). Milton writes in blank heroic verse, occasionally interjected by iambic hexameter,

strongly rejecting rhyme, “the invention of a barbarous age” (P.L, The Verse), as he describes

it in his preliminary note on the “measure” he adopts. The invocation, comprising the first

twenty-six lines of his verse, is syntactically complex, with multiple relative clauses and

often overlapping causes and consequences. The poet’s diction resonates with a deliberate

latinate tone, reflecting his ambitious intention to elevate the English language to the same

standard of sophistication as Latin.

The first line emphatically announces the subject of Milton’s verse, where stress is laid on the

first act of ‘disobedience’ against God by mankind’s ancestors, Adam and Eve. The sense of

transgression finds a connection to the next line through a series of alliterated words “of …

first… fruit…forbidden” (Milton 1.1-2). The words recall the Feast of the Firstfruits,

mentioned in Leviticus in the Old Testament, signifying the ritual of laying in offering before

God the first harvest of fruits. Further, Milton proceeds to skillfully infuse the sense of taste

in the reader’s mind with that of death, woe, and mortality by placing the phrases “mortal

taste” and “death” and “all our woe” chronologically as cause and effect. The taste of the

forbidden fruit coexists with that of sorrow, death, and irreparable loss – the “fruit” of

Adam’s primal sin, inherited by the progeny of man.

Milton’s rhetorical skill manifests in the emotional manipulation of the readers by attributing

a set of negative identifiers with the existence of man itself. His “strategy of taunts and

accusations to trick us into accepting his judgments” (Ferry 12), as some critics have opined,

places the poet’s relationship to his readers in parallel with that of Satan and his followers.

Without elaborating on the implications of the “loss of Eden” (Milton 1.4), the coming lines

mark a thematic shift from the dread of sin to the Christian scheme of redemption of

mankind. The identity of Christ as “one greater man” is juxtaposed with that of Adam as the
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first sinner, echoing St. Paul’s conception of Christ as the second Adam in the Book of

Romans and 1 Corinthians.

In line 6, Milton finally addresses and sets forth an elaborate appeal to his unique, Christian

“heav'nly muse”, while simultaneously acquainting the readers with his extensive biblical

knowledge. Frequent Latinization of Hebrew words reveals the liberty Milton assumed in

transforming the spellings of words to achieve the sense of musicality he wished to produce

through his verse. He further contextualizes his divine muse in the Christian canon by

alluding to the biblical locales “Of Oreb, or of Sinai” (1.7), where Moses had received divine

inspiration and the Ten Commandments from God’s angel. The sequence of allusions to these

places follows a progressive pattern towards clarity from the Old Testament to the New

Testament (Jin 147). The ninth line introduces a direct reference to the first words in the

Book of Genesis, “In the beginning”, implying the poet’s alignment of himself with the

author of the text, Moses, as a “shepherd”, a prophetic leader, and a poet. Many critics have

noted the audacious implications in Milton beseeching the holy spirit to bestow him with the

same prophetic calibre as that granted to the biblical figure, Moses.

“Sion hill” and “Siloa’s brook” are indicated as the haunt of the heavenly muse, where the

poet places them on a geographically higher plane than Mount Helicon, the “Aonian mount”

where the classical muses resided. Milton’s bold assertion of his intention to “soar above” the

“middle flight” of his epic predecessors resonates with ambition and a hint of “poetic hubris”,

bearing strong connotations to Satan’s desire “To set himself in glory above his peers”

(Milton 1.39). His noble endeavor to strive for “Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme”

echoes Ariosto’s boastful opening from Orlando Furioso, where he invokes his mistress

instead of a divine muse.

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Milton’s simultaneous subscription to and transgression of classical epic conventions to suit

his purpose validates his role as an English epic poet, highly aware of his readership and the

religious and political context in which he wrote. Milton’s rejection of the heroic theme,

involving glorified representations of courage and masculine prowess, reflects his

Humanitarian Christian sensibility as a citizen who had witnessed the devastations of many

civil wars. Milton’s idea of heroism was shaped and defined by the Puritanical values of

righteousness, obedience, and humility. Besides thematic non-conformity, Milton violates

Aristotle’s advocacy for the detached narrative voice by frequently inserting himself in his

verse in propria persona.

Milton's ambitious claim to superiority among his peers and classical predecessors is

conscious and deliberate, betrayed by anxiety in the subsequent lines of running the risk of

Satan’s fate (Schwartz 4). There is a descent from presumption and pride, line seventeen

onward, into humility and quiet acknowledgment of the immodesty of his bold claims. The

narrative voice briefly digresses from his subject to exalt the creative muse through a series

of biblical motifs. Milton’s Puritan sentiments seep through, and so does his critique of

catholic ritual and pageantry, in his insinuation that the holy spirit preferred “Before all

temples th’ upright heart” (1.18). Placing his belief about the creation of the universe in

contrast with the classical notion of the universe materializing from a state of chaos, the poet

attributes it to the grand design of a divine creative source of the highest order.

The evocation of the biblical motif, in the following line, of the holy spirit as a dove sitting in

a vast abyss, resounds the second verse of Genesis, ‘And the Spirit of God moved upon the

face of the waters.’, while also attesting Milton’s awareness of symbols of the Old Testament.

Plunging into self-debasement before the muse, Milton juxtaposes his inner darkness – which

may well extend to his literal blindness – with the light of divine knowledge. The glorious
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poetic enterprise Milton aspires to undertake is one that demands immediacy and divine

agency that would “illumine” his mind to the “heighth of this argument” (1.24). The

conscious transgression of the boundaries of Puritan modesty was a risk Milton was able to

take only by virtue of his faith in the protection of his celestial muse.

Milton establishes, simplistically, in his concluding statement, the purpose of his verse, which

is to “justify the ways of God to men.” (1.26). In assuming a prophetic voice to convey the

word of God to fallen men, and in the act of his daring invocation itself, the poet finds

himself in the precarious liminal space between “prophetic election and satanic presumption”

(Schwartz 4). It is hard to miss in any part of Paradise Lost, Milton’s anxieties regarding the

ambiguities within himself, or the awareness of his own fallen state, as much as that of any

man. Nevertheless, his dramatic retelling of the Bible stands culturally immortal as “a great

synthesis of all that the Western mind was stored with by the middle of the seventeenth

century” (Daiches 439). On a macrocosmic scale, it may well serve as a universal allegory of

the ambiguity of human existence itself.

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Works Cited

Daiches. David. “On the Opening of Paradise Lost.” The Living Milton: Essays by Various

Hands, by Frank Kermode, Routledge Revivals, 2014, pp. 55-69. Google Books.

Web. 20 Nov. 2021.

Daiches, David. Milton: Paradise Lost. London, Edward Arnold, 1983. Internet Archives.

Web. 20 Nov. 2021.

Daiches, David. A Critical History of English Literature. Revised ed., vol. 1, New Delhi:

Supernova Publishers, 2010, pp. 390-456. Print.

Ferry, Anne. Milton's Epic Voice: The Narrator in Paradise Lost. Chicago, University of

Chicago Press, 1963. Google Books. Web. 22 Nov. 2021.

Sunwoo, Jin. “Poetic Hubris as Knowing Transgression in the Invocations of Miltonʹs

Paradise Lost”. May 2004, Seoul. SCRIBD. Web. 20 Nov. 2021.

Riggs, William G. The Christian Poet in Paradise Lost. London, University of California

Press, 1972. Google Books. Web. 20 Nov. 2021.

Schwartz, Louis. The Cambridge Companion to Paradise Lost. New York, Cambridge

University Press, 2014. Google Books. Web. 21 Nov. 2021.