Use these questions or activities to help gauge students’ familiarity with and spark their interest in the context of the work, giving them an entry point into the text itself.

Short Answer

1. Milton’s Paradise Lost is probably the most famous epic poem in the English language, drawing inspiration on the great Western epics of Greece and Rome. What is an “epic” poem? What epics have you read or heard about? What themes or literary devices do you associate with literary form?

Teaching Suggestion: An epic is usually defined as a long narrative poem with heroic themes, including war and heroic journeys. The most famous western epics that Milton would have known would have included The Iliad and The Odyssey, attributed to the Greek poet Homer, and The Aeneid by the Roman poet Virgil. Early epics from farther east (which would not have been known to Milton) include the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh and the Indian Ramayana and Mahabharata. Students may have a stronger appreciation for and understanding of Paradise Lost if they develop some familiarity with other texts in the same genre; to help with this, consider breaking the class into groups and assigning a single epic other than Paradise Lost for each group to research and report on.