Essay Selections from Milton's Parradise Lost Wrote this a while ago. May still be helpful.

Poetic Thesis - Milton Two Passages from Paradise Lost Before beginning my analysis of this sample of John Milton work, I am sure some of you may find it interesting to note that before beginning his piece, Milton makes clear his opposition to a poetic metre involving rhyme, this being the 'invention of a barbarous age'. Instead he writes in what he terms English heroic verse, or iambic pentameter, proposing to emulate the style of …showed first 75 words of 1093 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1093 total…also be seen as the authors warning to his society, which as all societies in recorded history involved people killed in wars over power and wealth, an obsession with beauty, especially feminine (this could be synonymous with Eve, who was then considered the vehicle of temptation)often in conflict with the Church's own map of the universe (in a later passage Milton thinly disguises a caveat against questioning God's glory by looking into the cosmos).