Milton's Epic Similes

This is a figure of speech particularly appropriate to epic poetry. Homer uses them extensively (they are sometimes called 'Homeric similes'), Virgil elaborated them further, and Virgil was subsequently the model for epic poetry in Western Europe. In English verse we find extended similes in Spenser's Faerie Queene (and allegory is itself a kind of ongoing simile), and they are brought to a peak of sustained sophistication by Milton. Epic similes appear throughout Paradise Lost and though each needs to be considered separately we can venture the following general remarks about them:

• Because epic similes demand careful attention they slow down our reading; and by their nature they freeze the narrative. This helps to achieve the stately pace appropriate to the gravity of epic.
• Epic similes usually describe actions rather than objects. Thus individual movements and gestures are given great emphasis and significance, again contributing to a solemn, ceremonial tone.
• They are a baroque ornamental device, which extends the range of imagery vastly beyond the immediate setting of the narrative.
• Epic similes are virtuosic, demonstrating the learning and imagination of the writer and appealing to the educated reader (indeed, they are an important part of the education of the reader: this is a traditional relation fo reader to text that we need to rememebr whenever we put ourselves in the position of analyst).
• Epic similes relate to action, character and theme by amplifying significant aspects of what they describe. For example, Satan in Hell is like a sea monster not just because he is big, but also because he is destructive. By comparing events in the immediate narrative to later history Milton also collapses chronology and implies the universal relevance of his subject matter.

Here is a discussion of the epic simile at work in a passage from Book III (lines 430-441).

Here walked the Fiend at large in spacious field.
As when a vulture on Imaus bred,
Whose snowy ridge the roving Tartar bounds,
Dislodging from a region scarce of prey
To gorge the flesh of lambs or yeanling kids
On hills where flocks are fed, flies toward the springs
Of Ganges or Hydaspes, Indian streams;
But in his way lights on the barren plains
Of Sericana, where Chineses drive
With sails and wind their cany wagons light:
So on this windy sea of land, the Fiend
Walked up and down alone bent on his prey ...

As we know, a simile compares a to b. So we may begin by asking, what is being compared to what here? With an epic simile, we should look for an action rather than a thing. The action being described here is walked (line 1 of passage) - this is known as the control, or tenor of the simile. The action walked is compared to the journey of the vulture, which is the vehicle.

Characteristically, the action in the simile is extended, becoming a mini-narrative concentrically enfolded by the episode and the larger narrative schemes beyond: the vulture starts in a rugged, hostile place (Imaus) and leaves this place with little food ('scarce of prey') to seek prey in the more fertile lands of India; but on the way he comes to the barren Chinese desert. Each detail of this 'story' is a precisely chosen point of comparison, as we can see by thinking of it like this:

Vehicle: Tenor
Vulture is a bird of prey: Satan is destructive, a predatory enemy of man.
Vulture (V) is looking for prey: Satan (S) is actively seeking out man to corrupt him.
V starts in Imaus (hostile): S starts in Hell.
V bound in by Tartary (Siberia): S's Inferno -'Tartarus' means 'infernal region' in classical epic.
V scents its prey from a great distance (17th c. belief): Satan's evil intelligence leads him to man.
V flies: S has flown to earth
V wants to gorge lambs and kids: S wants to corrupt innocence (lamb symbolic of purity, Christ)
V seeks a mild, fertile place: S seeks Eden
V lands midway in the desert: S has arrived in a wilderness on his way to Eden.
Chinese desert is 'sea on land', the confusion of elements: Satan brings confusion to earth.

Each detail in the simile goes beyond visual vividness to tell us something about Satan. In the course of the epic simile, the physical world reveals its property as an infinite store of symbols, pointing us to the inner meaning of the cosmos. There is still another level of meaning achieved through the use of allusion (echoing another text). Walked seems a surprisingly everyday verb to build the whole simile on, but its force is greatly increased if we reflect on the reference to Job I.7:

And the Lord said unto Satan, Whence comest thou? then Satan answered the Lord, and said, From going to and fro in the earth, and from walking up and down on it.

The first temptation of man is thus linked to the Old Testament testing of Job: by extension, Adam and Job are Everyman, in continual danger from his restless, roving enemy. There is a further possible allusion in the reference to Tartarus: it was Genghis Khan who broke Tartary's bounds to lead his destructive hordes westwards.

The pedagogical function of the lines depends for its efficacy on the pleasurable exercise it gives the reader's imagination: we have been taken on an exhilarating inner journey through the landscapes of Tartary, India and China (and, as with any epic simile, there is the demand to hold the story in our minds while we read the simile, and then return to it). Intellectually, the passage has taken us into areas such as the bible, history, higher learning and popular belief. The ornamental surface carries an abstract thematic depth.

Milton's Punctuation

If there were a competition for the driest blogpost title, this would be a contender. Yet there is a particular interest in the punctuation of literary texts, an interest aroused in me by graduate studies (many years ago) in paleography and the editing of medieval texts - Oxford's solid philological tradition - and by a subsequent reading of Malcolm Parkes's Pause and Effect and John Lennard's The Poetry Handbook, which pays detailed attention to this rather esoteric aspect of poetic craft (Lennard studied with Parkes at some stage, I think).

Punctuation matters. Careful writers - perhaps you and I on a good day - choose punctuation marks with the same care as they choose words. Broadly speaking these marks work in three ways - visually, aurally and logically. For example, the colon (1) helps us to see the segments of a sentence or period on the page, (2) creates an emphatic pause which we hear, and (3) suggests some logical connection between what precedes and follows it, thus guiding our understanding of the sense of a passage.

Too often, printers and editors alter authorial punctuation. But when we can be sure we are seeing the original (or at any rate, something roughly contemporary with the original, and thus conforming to many of the same conventions), it will repay our critical attention. Below I discuss the part punctuation plays in some lines from Milton. Familiar terms are used in the following ways, with bold and italics distinguishing where the same word is used to indicate the graphic mark or a sequence of text.

A colon (plural cola) indicates the mark :
A colon (plural cola) indicates everything written between cola, ie the segment of text which terminates in this mark (or a full stop).

A semi-colon (pl semi-cola) indicates the mark ;
A semi-colon (pl semi-cola) indicates the texts terminating in the mark ; or, again, with a terminal stop.

Similarly, a comma is the mark, and a comma (pl commata) refers to the words enclosed by commas.

A sentence is a grammatical statement with, normatively, a subject and verb which makes independent sense. It does not necessarily end with a full stop (though it normally terminates in one o the marks including a stop (?!;:.).

A period is a complete line of thought, which may contain several grammatical sentences, and which ends in a full stop (still called a 'period' in American English, recalling the earlier rhetorical tradition which Milton and others worked within).

An early modern writer like Milton typically composes not primarily in sentences, but in periods. To get a feel for this, we have to extend our view beyond the sentence, which is generally taught as the largest grammatical unit today. A rough equivalent to a Miltonic period would be the paragraph, a  gathering of sentences to make a cohesive larger statement. Another analogy is to see the punctuation marks as the joints of a limb, articulating the various members and holding them together to form a greater whole.

Simply to get our eye in, we can have a look at the 'joints' of a representative portion of text, Paradise Lost, Book X, lines 312-24. Text and notes are from the Dartmouth hypertext edition:

Now had they brought the work by wondrous Art
Pontifical, a ridge of pendent Rock
Over the vext Abyss, following the track
Of Satan, to the self same place where hee [ 315 ]
First lighted from his Wing, and landed safe
From out of Chaos to the out side bare
Of this round World: with Pinns of Adamant
And Chains they made all fast, too fast they made
And durable; and now in little space [ 320 ]
The confines met of Empyrean Heav'n
And of this World, and on the left hand Hell
With long reach interpos'd; three sev'ral wayes
In sight, to each of these three places led.

Stripped down eccentrically to punctuation marks only, this passage becomes ,,,,:  ,;,;. The period is composed of two cola, around the pivotal colon (line 318). The first colon has four commas (none of them, we note, at the end of a line, the medial placement creating a series of cross-rhythms) and thus five grammatical commata. The second colon comprises three semi-cola. The first two semi-cola have two commata each. Without commas, the main structure is clearly : ; ; . The limb of the period is in two halves, and the second half has two smaller joints (the semi-cola) holding it together. The whole period resembles the classical period of four cola. A further analogy is the renaissance altarpiece,  which is composed of various leaves (typically a diptych or triptych, but often with further sections), making a single work composed of distinct images - as foreign to prevailing conceptions of the artwork as Milton's periods are to those of the modern notion of sentence / statement.

Now we have identified the joints (or leaves), we are in a better position to follow the current of thought. Let us consider a longer period, also from Paradise Lost (the opening of Book IX).


First Colon

NO more of talk where God or Angel Guest
With Man, as with his Friend, familiar us'd
To sit indulgent, and with him partake
Rural repast, permitting him the while
Venial discourse unblam'd:

This is the first colon, ending midway through line 5, where the colon acts as a brake against the metrical momentum. It provides a link to the preceding book, referring to the scene we have just left: the poet tells us he will move on from the happy scene of man talking amicably with angels. There are five commata, the first two embracing the subject, and each of the last three giving an image of a particular action: used to sit ... partake ... permitting. These are non-finite verbal forms (two infinitives and a participle), suggesting the timeless, unhurried nature of such discourse.  The colon is placed to create a pause for reflection, significantly pointing the key word unblam'd, which summarises man's lost innocence.

Second Colon

I now must change [ 5 ]
Those Notes to Tragic; foul distrust, and breach
Disloyal on the part of Man, revolt,
And disobedience:

The second colon explains why there can be 'No more' of this pleasant theme. It is made up of two semi-cola. The first of these announces the change of subject; the second unpacks the full sense of the key word Tragic and takes us to the momentous word disobedience (the negative prefix echoing unblam'd at the conclusion of the previous colon). The four commata list, with cumulative force, the crimes of man (distrust, breach disloyal, revolt, disobedience): these stark nouns offer a tonal contrast to the actions described in the first colon. We notice, too, the semantic aptness of breach / Disloyal being visually prised apart by a line break, a graphic representation of the rift between God and man.

Third Colon

On the part of Heav'n
Now alienated, distance and distaste,
Anger and just rebuke, and judgement giv'n, [ 10 ]
That brought into this World a world of woe,
Sinne and her shadow Death, and Miserie
Deaths Harbinger:

The second colon explained the first, and anatomised the elements of man's revolt. It moved us on from a timeless then to an equally verbless Now. The relation between colon 2 and colon 3 is that of cause and effect, as we learn of heaven's response to man's fall and the subsequent introduction of sin and death into the terrestrial sphere.

Fourth Colon

Sad task, yet argument
Not less but more Heroic then the wrauth
Of stern Achilles on his Foe pursu'd [ 15 ]
Thrice Fugitive about Troy Wall; or rage
Of Turnus for Lavinia disespous'd,
Or Neptun's ire or Juno's, that so long
Perplex'd the Greek and Cytherea's Son;
If answerable style I can obtaine [ 20 ]
Of my Celestial Patroness, who deignes
Her nightly visitation unimplor'd,
And dictates to me slumb'ring, or inspires
Easie my unpremeditated Verse:

Now that the subject matter of the Fall has been outlined, the fourth colon reflects on it as suitable matter for epic verse. What is a heroic subject? The link between Milton's work and ancient epic is the theme of vengeance and retribution by the mighty (and indeed almighty). This colon digresses into an ostentatiously erudite riff on this subject, the commata unfolding descriptive ornamentations as the poet's mind explores the theme. The first semi-colon declares that the Fall is not less but more heroic than Achilles' combat with Hector in Homer's Iliad. The next semi-colon offers further classical examples of the theme of divine 'ire' and 'rage' in retribution. The entire colon subdivides into a tricolon, a group of three, with the third semi-colon being the longest, attaining a climactic force as it describes the nightly visitations to the poet by the Muse. The subject of the whole colon is thus the superiority of Milton's poem to ancient epic: his work, we learn, has a loftier theme, and is directly divinely inspired without human interference. But we note here that even as Milton laments man's pride in challenging a higher authority, he himself asserts his own will against the literary authority of classical poetry. At the same time, the reference to the actions of classical narratives seems a diversionary tactic, taking our view away from the total lack of memorable dramatic action in the story of fall and punishment in the Christian narrative he has outlined. The classically composed period is, we might feel, holding together a passage of thought vexed by paradox, tonal contrast, a sense of the mismatch between matter and manner in the Christian epic itself. We are given a chance to rest as the colon falls at the end of a largely iambic line.

Fifth Colon

Since first this Subject for Heroic Song [ 25 ]
Pleas'd me long choosing, and beginning late;
Not sedulous by Nature to indite
Warrs, hitherto the onely Argument
Heroic deem'd, chief maistrie to dissect
With long and tedious havoc fabl'd Knights [ 30 ]
In Battels feign'd; the better fortitude
Of Patience and Heroic Martyrdom
Unsung; or to describe Races and Games,
Or tilting Furniture, emblazon'd Shields,
Impreses quaint, Caparisons and Steeds; [ 35 ]
Bases and tinsel Trappings, gorgious Knights
At Joust and Torneament; then marshal'd Feast
Serv'd up in Hall with Sewers, and Seneshals;
The skill of Artifice or Office mean,
Not that which justly gives Heroic name [ 40 ]
To Person or to Poem.

The fifth and final colon completes the claim for the Fall as an heroic theme by contrasting it with other epic narrative verse. Where the fourth colon dealt with ancient epic, the fifth describes more recent works. They are obsessed with boring battles, nostalgic ideas of chivalry ('tinsel Trappings'), and don't explore more interesting kinds of courage such as that of the martyrs. This great colon has no fewer than six semi-cola as Milton warms to his theme of the inferiority of everyone else's poetry to his own, in good puritanical fashion clearly showing an appetite for the kind of literary pleasures he deprecates.  The important concept word 'Heroic' appears near the end to tie the fourth and fifth cola together.

It is perhaps worth repeating the observation that Milton usually places the heavy punctuation marks not at the ends of lines but in the middle. The shape and syntax of the period creates its own rhythm on top of, and against, the vestigial iambic metre. This plays a large part in giving Milton's verse a tense and 'heavy' feel as so much seems to be calling out for emphasis.

Finally, the long period here is a demonstration of the 'Heroic' nature of poet and poem, as it shows one vast line of thought encompassing rural repasts, divine anger, Homeric epic, divine inspiration, and chivalric verse. Here is a mind thinking, planning, remembering, considering and claiming with a triumphant mental energy.

Further Reading
Brief History of Punctuation in Britannica
Stephen Reimer's course notes from University of Alberta

John Lennard, The Poetry Handbook
M B Parkes, Pause and Effect: Introduction to the History of Punctuation in the West (Scolar Press, 1992)
Lynne Truss, Eats Shoots and Leaves has a handy summary of the earlier system.