"Milton used and recreated, in strongly functional ways the standard conventions of the epic." Discuss and illustrate from Paradise Lost Book-I.

A Christian Epic: In Paradise Lost Milton has created a Christian epic on classical lines. As an epic, it involves the basic conventions of the classical epic. But these conventions and devices are given new meaning by Milton within the scope of Christian theology. As such the supernatural machinery, the roll-call and council of leaders, the plunge into the middle of the subject, and the