Every speech he gives is fraudulent and every story he tells is a lie. He begins the poem as a just-fallen angel of enormous stature, looks like a comet or meteor as he leaves Hell, then disguises himself as a more humble cherub, then as a cormorant, a toad, and finally a snake. His ability to reason and argue also deteriorates.
In Book I, he persuades the devils to agree to his plan. In Book IV, however, he reasons to himself that the Hell he feels inside of him is reason to do more evil. When he returns to Earth again, he believes that Earth is more beautiful than Heaven, and that he may be able to live on Earth after all.
Furthermore, attention will be given to the epic hero. However, first of all we must focus on the authors themselves and their works. Milton had an exceptionally great knowledge of La Divina Commedia. In a letter to Benedetto Buonmattei, the leading Dante-expert of the day, he writes of the depth of his study of Italian literature, especially the works of Petrarch and Dante.
Milton even provides an English poetic translation of a few lines from the Inferno in his work Of Reformation. This information and the many similarities between the two works may indicate that Milton was inspired to use the genre of the epic for his work, as applied by Dante and by classical authors before him.
Dante finished his Commedia in and he is considered to be one of the greatest poets of all times. His La Divina Commedia can be regarded as one of the works of art that initiate the beginning of the Renaissance in Italy. The work had quite an impact and it had a wide range of audiences: students read it in grammar school and the work was discussed in the marketplace and even in church.
One of the main reasons for this impact is probably the fact that is was written in the vernacular as opposed to many works written in Latin. Modern Philology. Comparative Literature Studies. Dante: a Life. London: Phoenix, p.
Commentary and Ideology: Dante in the Renaissance. Durham: Duke University Press, pp. Boccacio who added the word Divina to the title of the work, stressing the divine meaning it contains. In literature, an epic is a grand narrative poem in majestic style about the exploits and adventures of a superhuman hero engaged in a quest or some serious endeavour.
The hero is distinguished above all others by his strength and courage. The subject-matter of epic includes myth, legend, history, and folk tale. Battles and perilous journeys play a large part, as do gods, the supernatural, and magic; scenes are often set in the Underworld or in Heaven. Certain formal features are conspicuous: the narrator vouches for the truth of his story; there are invocations, elaborate greetings, long speeches, detailed similes, digressions, and the frequent repetition of elements typical of an epic.
Traditional epics are works such as the Iliad and the Odyssey, while literary epics were composed in deliberate imitation of the traditional form. Literary epics do not necessarily have to contain all of the epic conventions as the ones mentioned above, as long as it manifests the epic spirit and grandeur in the scale, the scope and the human importance of their subjects.
It is not difficult to apply the label of an epic to Paradise Lost, since it contains many epic conventions. La Divina Commedia may not contain an epic hero or lengthy descriptions of battles, but it does contain many epic features, such as the epic spirit and grandeur of the scale of the narrative.
Furthermore, the subject of the redemption of the human soul is certainly of profound human interest. The Renaissance period shows the revival of art and literature under the influence of classical models, and many literary epics were written in this period, of which La Divina Commedia and Paradise Lost are certainly the most impressive ones. The Renaissance is believed to have originated in Florence in the fourteenth century, where there was a revival of interest in classical antiquity.
Important figures of that era were Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, but also painters like Giotto. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press. See: www. Glossary of Literary Terms. Inspired by stories such as these, Dante and later Milton wrote their epic poems.
Milton had the intention of writing an epic poem on an exalted subject decades before he started writing Paradise Lost in Milton spent almost twenty years writing controversial prose and political pamphlets and he was a strong supporter of liberty of conscience, human choice and free will, themes also recurring in Paradise Lost.
The epic poem Paradise Lost was originally published in ten books, but from onwards the work consisted of twelve books after the Virgilian model, by splitting books seven and ten. Paradise Lost is the poem Milton is still famous for today. The epic convention of the prophecy can be found in books 11 and 12, where Michael reveals to Adam the future of his descendants. A Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, ed. Elizabeth Knowles, Oxford University Press, Milton, Paradise Lost.
A Student Guide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. Vol 1. New York: W. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. The Classical Journal. These Biblical events that Milton mentions here, have not yet happened, but cast a look into the future. There are many other epic conventions to be found in Paradise Lost.
Another important epic convention is the elaborate descriptions of battles. Furthermore, the notion of supernatural intervention occurs when Christ offers to sacrifice himself for mankind.
O memory that wrote down what I saw, here shall your worthiness appear! Furthermore, the work contains three events which can be classified as supernatural interventions. The first one is the moment when Dante encounters three animals on his way: a she-wolf, a leopardess and a lion, hich form an allegory of the temptations of Sin.
I come from a place to which I long to return. Love moved me and makes me speak. Beatrice is sent to help Dante when he strays from the right path in his life and she wants him to learn the knowledge he needs in order to redeem himself. Beatrice tells Dante that when she was still alive, she was his inspiration and this inspiration kept him on the straight and narrow path of a good Christian life: Quando di carne a spirto era salita E bellezza e virtu cresciuta m'era, Fu' io a lui men cara e men gradita; 14 Feldherr, Andrew.
E volse i passi suoi per via non vera, Imagini di ben seguendo false, Che nulla promession rendono intera. He was tempted by sin and Beatrice offers Dante a chance to purify and save his soul. Dante also makes use of the epic notion of catalogues. All the characters named in this and the other catalogues, are names from the classical period, and hence proper to the epic genre.
Dante is able to make these kinds of references to the future, since the story is set in late March of the year , but actually written between and He refers here to the May day festivities of , where there was bloodshed between two Guelph factions, the Bianchi and the Neri. In June , the Bianchi gained political control of Florence and banished the Neri from the city.
Caccio here refers to the fact that the exiled Neri turned to Pope Boniface VIII for help and they managed to regain control of Florence and passed severe sentences against over six hundred Bianchi. Caccio predicts these events to happen within three years. It is striking that Dante chooses Virgil, one of the most famous classical authors, to be his guide.
Virgil has written a work containing a journey into the underworld as well. In his Aeneid, Virgil tells the story of Aeneas descending into the underworld. The fact that Virgil has already written about such a journey and therefore knows the way makes him the perfect guide. You alone are he from whom I took the fair style that has done me honor.
It is clear that La Divina Commedia belongs to the epic genre. However, the one thing that the work is missing, is an epic hero. Dante might be considered to be its hero, but he does not display much heroic behaviour. In the sixteenth century, this lack of a hero caused scepticism in regarding the work as an epic. Others hailed Dante as the best heroic poet, even surpassing Homer. However, as we have seen in this chapter, there are so many ways in which La Divina Commedia can be described as an epic, that scholars nowadays see the work as belonging to this genre.
The notion of freedom and equality often recurs in Paradise Lost, and in most instances this can be linked to Satan. Satan can be described as a free spirit and there seem to be no boundaries to his freedom; even the boundaries of Hell are hardly any 15 Alighieri, Dante.
So , he decided to Launch a revolution against God but , he was not sure if that revolution would win or not. He lists many sins, along with their punishments and placements in Hell. Strangely enough, Dante does not have a specific circle for idolatry, the worship of idols, or something other than God. This is thought to be strange because idolatry is generally considered a grave sin.
One possible explanation of this is that each sin in itself can be viewed as a form of idolatry. Virgil, who is guiding Dante through the inferno, warns Dante not to talk to the men and women in hell. Dante, though, proceeds to talk to as many people as he can. This is another representation of the lack of self control and self discipline in mankind.
However, this is not seen as a solid basis upon which absolute doubt, required by Descartes, can be built. Ironically, his skepticism offers such that I am in a state of doubt, I will also have doubt about the possibility that there could even be a deceiving being.
As such, my doubt about the possibility of such a being serves to undermine the greater doubt that is supposed to be generated by this being. In order for the evil demon to generate such a degree of doubt it must be possible for it to exist. However, Descartes does not provide enough proof for his claim of its possibility. His case focuses not so much on the roles of God or Adam and Eve, but on the actions of Satan.
In the first two books Milton portrays a web of evil so complex that its density reminds us of our own existence and confusion, magnified to heroic proportions. In secular terms Satan is the heroic, if defeated, military figure, but such a figure is to be admired only in evil days cf. Summers We know he has a plan. We know he has our interests in mind. We know he cares for us in his heart.
He is a variant of Achilles, who equates honor with his own status. He is Odysseus and Jason on their heroic voyages, leader and chief warrior in battle during and after the War in Heaven, and through it all the most powerful speaker, able to rally and organize his troops with the eloquence of his appeals to their own heroic values.
Forsyth He never seems to realize that he can never win in a contest between the Creator and the created being. Milton wrote Paradise Lost as an inverted epic or anti-epic. He has twisted and reversed the epic conventions to conform them to his retelling of the Biblical account of Creation and the Fall as given in Genesis. He does this to give an account of his own Christian worldview.
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