Assignment On

THEME OF INVOCATION IN 'PARADISE LOST'

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Department of English

Raiganj University (SUDEB MANDAL)

Raiganj, College Para. Department of English

Uttar Dinajpur, Roll No: PGENG190031

Pin: 733134 Regi. No: 0409190001

West Bengal Session: 2019-2020

 Date:22.06.2020

Assignment On
THEME OF INVOCATION IN
'PARADISE LOST'

Sign of the Student

Introduction :
It is the epic convention to begin the poem with an invocation to the divine
spirit to aid the poet in his great motivation of writing poetry. Homer thus
begins his Iliad:

‘Achilles wrath, to Greece the direful spring

Of Woes unnumbered, Heavenly Goddess sing!’

In Odyssey the Muse is again addressed to depict or to sing the wandering of

Odysseus. Virgil too begins his Aeneid with the words: “Arms and the man I
sing….”. Such epical canon is also employed by Milton too in his Paradise Lost
where the first 26 lines constitute the part of invocation in which a pious address
is made to the Muse and states his theme of the poem.

Analysis:
Like Virgil Milton directly states the elevated theme of his, that is the
‘man’s first disobedience’. In a highly Latinized verse he alienates the subject
from The Book of Genesis:

"Of Man’s first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and all our woe,

With the loss of Eden, till one greater Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful seat."

Milton proposes to compose or sing of man’s first act of disobedience

to God’s command in eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge which was
forbidden by God and as a result of which death and all the miseries of mankind
were brought into this world and the heavenly state of innocence and bliss
which man enjoyed in Heaven was lost, until Jesus Christ, the Son of God
should atone for our sins by his death and regain for us the lost happiness.

Milton invokes his part to the Heavenly Muse and she is localized not
upon Mount Olympus or Mount Helicon, but ‘on the secret top’ of Horeb or
Sinai, sacred in Hebraic belief, associated here particularly with Moses:

“Sing, heavenly muse, that on the secret top,

Of Oreb or of Sinai didst inspire………..”

It is said that God’s message was first sent in Jerusalem to the Jews, the world of
the ancient religion. Moses and Jenova are its old divine characters. The
Heavenly Muse and its structure and location were first revealed before the
Jews. The poet is eager to know the reality how Heaven and earth came into
existence out of chaos. People say that Muse lives in Sion Hill. Thus he prays to
the goddess to inspire him from there to his articulation of epic poetry.

Like a Renaissance man Milton also invokes Holy Spirit to his aid. As a
true learned scholar he blends classical, Hebrew and Christian element
together. The prologues in Paradise Lost begin as classical invocations but with
one exception, they rise to Christian prayers to the Holy Spirit.

The poet belives that the subject he projects for his epic was not attempted in
the Pagan world earlier - "things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme." Then he
reinforces his prayer with double invocation. He invokes the Holy Spirit whom
he knows dwelling in the faithful hearts of men and was the rot cuse of the
creation:

"And chiefly thou, O spirit, taht dost prefer

Before all temples the upright heart and pure

 Instruct me, for thou know'st."

Milton also possesses high moral plane and seriousness in composing

his poem. Alike the great classics his is the ambitions task with no ordinary
theme. He seeks Devine inspiration for his adventurous song:

“…….. I thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song,

That with no middle flight intends to soar

Above the Aonian mount, while it pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or shyme”.

Milton wants to rise very high in his creative urge in the reality of things and
incidents. He wishes his poetry to be better than the literature composed on the
Aonian Mount by the ancient authors. His is the subject not yet attempted by
any author in prose or poetry. Milton seeks aid of the Holy Spirit for his lofty
composition that has always been in existence and knows everything.

Milton further expresses his humility with an earnest appeal for divine
support to overcome his limitation:

“What in me is dark

Illumine, what is low raise and support

That to the height of this great argument

I may assert Eternal Providence

And justify the ways of God to men."

Milton's invocation also illustrates some features of his grand style. It opens
with a syntactical leap which T.S. Eliot calls "A breathless leap." The opening
sentences gain power because of the delaying verb. In imperative sentences,
the verb is normally placed first. But here the verb 'Sing' is 39th word in the
sentence.

It is a poignant references to his terrible limitation as a poet his blindness.

Metaphorically, the darkness might the ignorance if the poet has any. Epic is a
poetic art of a high order and lowliness is also to be removed from him. Milton’s
plan is to affirm that the Divine plan for the world is beneficent and that God’s
dealings with men are always just.

The invocation of Paradise Lost is of high merit. “The plaung of the

pauses, the use and fall of emotion, the high emotional charge in which the
poet’s sense of dedication and of communion with the great Biblical figures of
the Old Testament is communicated, the supplicatory cadence of the appeal to
have his darkness illumined and his mind elevated, and the final powerful
simplicity of the concluding statement of his purpose – all this represents poetic
art of a higher order” (David Daiches). Here is indeed the loftiness of thought,
splendid dignity of expression and rhythmic felicities.

*Conclusion* :
To sum up, the invocation in Paradise lost (Book 1) announces the new "
English heroic verse without rhyme", a challeng to conventional expectation.
And Milton, in his invocation in Paradise Lost has converted a pagen epic
convention into a christian prayer. Moreover, it suggests vaster and nobler
scope of the poet. While Homer sings of the fortune of a cily and Virgil that of
an empire, Milton is concerned with the whole history and destiny of mankind.