How was John Milton’s Paradise Lost influenced by Virgil’s Aeneid?
Answers
Explanation:
Milton's Paradise Lost and Virgil's Aeneid. Through all of literary history, authors have been inspired by the work of both their predecessors as well as their contemporaries. ... Milton, in Paradise Lost, references a “father work” of sorts when he creates his characters and guides the story line
Explanation:
Through all of literary history, authors have been inspired by the work of both their predecessors as well as their contemporaries. It is not uncommon to find trends in literature of a certain time, or find traces of previous works within literature. Some authors use inspiration from their predecessors to establish a sense of superiority for their work, whereas others use it to give their characters more substance, or foreshadow for the rest of the plot. Milton, in Paradise Lost, references a “father work” of sorts when he creates his characters and guides the story line. The Aeneid by Virgil is a father text to Paradise Lost. By father text, I mean a text that fed the plot and characters in a later text.
While reading Paradise Lost, having prior knowledge of The Aeneid, it is almost impossible to ignore the parallels which Milton draws. Some of the most striking parallels are those drawn between the main character of The Aeneid, Aeneas, and Satan, a major player in Paradise Lost. At first, this realization is shocking, to say the least. Aeneas is the hero of Virgil’s poem, and Satan is the enemy of God in Milton’s Christian poem. First, I would like to explore a few of the parallels and then talk about why they might be important to recognize and understand.
Within the first book of Paradise Lost, we find things that echo the sounds of The Aeneid. In the first book is when we find that Satan and his devils have been kicked out of Heaven for rebelling against God and his plan. Satan is kicked out of Heaven but Hell doesn’t yet exist. This is when the devils take it upon themselves to figure out a plan of sorts. They start to decide what the plan for Hell will be. Several devils present plans, but ultimately Satan comes up with the plan to attack this new species God is creating, and found what will become known as Hell.
Though the motivation may be different, for Aeneas, he too is kicked out of his home and then prompted to become the founder of Rome. He and his men are stranded away from what they know, and he is the one to give them a pep talk of sorts and create a plan out of nothing.
The beginning of this poem paints Satan as a hero who rises from the fire and brimstone to rally his devils against the one who unjustly threw them from Heaven. He sounds very similar to Aeneas who rallies his men to rise and fight against the natives in Rome.
To anyone familiar with The Aeneid, it would be evident that Aeneas is on a moral mission to found Rome. He isn’t completing this task to serve himself, but rather to create an empire to better mankind.
Following the pattern Aeneas sets out, the answer to those questions would be yes. However, the fact that Milton’s poem was one with heavy Christian influence would toss this theory out. Milton begins his epic by painting Satan as a hero of sorts, but extended exposure to the poem, leads the reader to the understanding that Satan is an egotist. He is trying to destroy the power of heaven, not because something better should exist, but because he wants what God has. For Milton, this rebellion and jealousy is too terrible a thing for him to become heroic. Looking at the Christian framework for this poem helps us understand that though Satan echoes Aeneas, he does not in fact become like him.
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