Discuss Paradise Lost, written by John Milton, as an epic.

Milton's Paradise Lost is a long,
narrative poem told in a serious manner, using elevated language, featuring characters
of a high position.  All of these characteristics suggest the work is an epic
poem.

The piece also begins in medias res (Latin for "in
the middle of things") as Homer's epic poems do.  The speaker also invokes, following
the custom of the Greeks, help from the supernatural to inspire and guide him in the
telling of the tale.  

The manner and language of the poem,
as well as the request for help, are revealed in the opening of the
poem:

Of
man's first disobedience, and the fruit

Of that forbidden
tree, whose mortal taste

Brought death into the world, and
all our woe,

With loss of Eden, till one greater
Man

Restore us, and regain the blissful
seat,

Sing Heavenly Muse, that on the secret
top

Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst
inspire

That shepherd [Moses], who first taught the chosen
seed,

In the beginning how the Heavens and
Earth

Rose out of Chaos:....I
thence

Invoke thy aid to my adventurous
song,

That with no middle flight intends to
soar

Above the Aonian mount, while it
pursues

Things unattempted yet in prose or
rhyme.

The serious tone and
elevated language are obvious (the speaker is not just writing a narrative, he is
attempting to do something never before done in literature, for instance), but what may
be most notable, or at least most interesing, is the speaker's connection of the Muses
from Greek myth to the Holy Spirit of the Bible.  The speaker fuses the Greek and the
Christian, or, as some would phrase it, the Pagan with the Christian.  In preparing to
tell the epic tale of Satan's fall from heaven, the speaker equates the Muses and the
Holy Spirit.