Paradise Lost
by John Milton

Paradise Lost: Style 1 key example

Style
Explanation and Analysis:

Paradise Lost is written in blank verse, or unrhymed iambic pentameter. This style lends structure and precision to the verse—providing exactly ten syllables per line—while also allowing Milton to experiment with his verse, without the constraints of rhyme. Indeed, in his prefatory note about the poem's style, Milton calls blank verse "English heroic verse without rhyme," noting that "rhyme being no necessary adjunct or true ornament of poem or good verse...[it is] the invention of a barbarous age." "[A]ncient liberty," he declares, has been "recovered to heroic poem from the troublesome and modern bondage of rhyming."