Milton’s New Hero: Homeric Revisions in Paradise Regained

Abstract

Abstract In this paper I propose an important, but hitherto unexplored connection between Milton’s Paradise Regained and Homer’s Odyssey. I argue at length that Paradise Regained is Milton’s critical revision of the story of Telemachus, the section of the Odyssey presenting the trials of Odysseus’s son. Recognizing Telemachus as Milton’s chief classical model for the Jesus of Paradise Regained provides solid grounding for earlier critics’ intuitions about Milton’s classicism, and it also sheds new light on Milton’s radically innovative poetic method.