John Milton's poetic style

The Miltonic verse (also Miltonic epic or Miltonic blank verse) was a highly influential poetic style and structure popularized by John Milton. Although Milton wrote earlier poetry, his influence is largely grounded in his later poems: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, and Samson Agonistes.

Miltonic verse

Milton's most notable works, including Paradise Lost, are written in blank verse: unrhymed iambic pentameter. He was not the first to use blank verse, which had been a mainstay of English drama since the 1561 play Gorboduc. His employment of the form outside drama, his frequent enjambment, and the relative looseness of his metre were very influential, and he became known for the style. The poet Robert Bridges analyzed Milton's versification in the monograph Milton's Prosody.

When Miltonic verse became popular, Samuel Johnson mocked Milton for inspiring bad blank verse, but he recognized that Milton's verse style was very influential. Poets such as Alexander Pope, whose final, incomplete work was intended to be written in the form, and John Keats, who complained that he relied too heavily on Milton, adopted and picked up various aspects of his poetry. In particular, Miltonic blank verse became the standard for those attempting to write English epics for centuries following the publication of Paradise Lost and his later poetry.

Christian epic

Milton was not the first to write an epic poem on a Christian theme.