The Night Departure: Tracing Medieval Epic from Ariosto to Milton

Milton’s use of material from Old French epic, as mediated by Ariosto and Tasso, is typically understood in terms of romance. Yet reading Paradise Lost against Orlando furioso and its chivalric predecessors allows Satan’s revolt to be situated in a long line of rebel baron epics. This line of descent can be traced from the paradigmatic Renaut de Montauban through the displaced rebellion of the Entrée d’Espagne to Ariosto’s reinterpretation of the tradition, his coding of political revolt as love rebellion, in the Furioso. Satan’s medieval genealogy is further reinforced by striking narrative parallels between Milton’s poem and Caxton’s 1488 translation, The Foure Sonnes of Aymon. The epic quality of the Fall, usually ascribed to the artful debasement of classical models, is also indebted to the medieval poems of feudal revolt, which were still capable of inspiring morally fraught narrative in Milton’s hands. Recognizing the persistence of the older epic form has important implications for both poetic and political readings of the poem.