Homeric Simile In Paradise Lost
An epic simile, also known as a Homeric simile, is defined as a simile where A is compared to B, then B is described in such detail that it becomes a digression. John Milton employed this device several times throughout Paradise Lost. The first two books of Paradise Lost are justly celebrated; they also contain almost all the epic conventions that Milton used in the poem.
The proposition that Milton’s verse-texture is fundamentally unmetaphorical -- far less figurative in Paradise Lost, indeed, than his ordinary prose style -- will be quickly dismissed by those who remember the poem as a series of images such as Satan’s moonlike shield, or Eve as the fairest unsupported flower. The ...
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Homer (the originator of the extended/epic simile) and Milton found it necessary to stop short of the complex metaphors that served the dramatists as instruments for psychological exploration and symbolic statement.
Homer’s similes provide a respite from the steady surge of heroic action, and broaden the scope of his poems. Into the simile could be introduced familiar scenes which would remind the listener of the world living on beyond the plains of Troy or Odysseus’ storm-beaten vessel. This precedent was followed, or at least honored nearly universally, by epic poets up to Milton. In Paradise Lost, tradition is modified to weave the long similes more closely into the poem’s structure and meaning. “Milton’s purpose was to absorb mythological themes into their myths, reassembling Truth as, in his figure, Isis reassembled the body of Osiris” (MacCaffrey, 120). His similes descend from the universals of myth to instances in history, legend, and nature, and so show something of ...
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have nothing to do with A. Milton, when comparing Satan stretched on the burning flood to Leviathan, goes on to describe how the pilot of some small night-foundered skiff’ is apt to mistake the sleeping Leviathan for an island and to cast anchor in the lee of him--all of which has nothing to do with Satan” (Blanchard, 17).
But does all that have nothing to do with Satan? Several Milton experts agree that Leviathan was traditionally associated with Satan. Even beyond this, it seem that the situation of the pilot in his skiff who mistakes Leviathan for an island has much to do with Satan and, in fact, indicates a characteristic difference between a Miltonic and a Homeric simile.
The ...
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"Homeric Simile In Paradise Lost." Essayworld.com. August 14, 2007. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Homeric-Simile-In-Paradise-Lost/69603.
"Homeric Simile In Paradise Lost." Essayworld.com. August 14, 2007. Accessed April 25, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Homeric-Simile-In-Paradise-Lost/69603.
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