This view of the classical epic may be justified, but its authority hardly applies to the task or "event" that "Paradise Lost" undertakes to explain. With Milton's most extraordinary claim "To explain the way of God to man", Milton takes on much more than an event. Though his telling of the tale of Original Sin is not much grander than an event; its tentacles reach into the subject of theology, politics, psychology, and the foundation of the entire earth. Unlike other epic poems, "Paradise Lost" usurps every aspect of authoritative discourse. This creates an enormous problem for critics in breaking down the intention and meaning of any aspect, because the very voice of authority that the critic may assume has been already stolen from them by the very poem in its claim that explains "the way of God to man".
This inherent problem that every critic seems overwhelmed by can be answered by claiming the primary voice. But since the poem claims the primary literary voice in the invocation of the "Muse", coming from a literary authority is an automatic inferior authority. Fortunately, there is way for the critic to catch a break. Since we have good biographical information about the author and we have many of his writings, if not all, we can make judgments on where the true inspiration lies and then give the reader a primary voice as a critic. Thus, the connections between the political relevance of the poem are absolutely critical to being able to comment on it so as not to sound minimalized by the very text itself.
Although this brings the reader to a place that is stable for entering the arena of criticism, it also opens up a Pandora's Box. Milton's political views are as ambiguous towards the end of his career as they are confident in the beginning of his career. As Peter Herman writes in Warring chains of signifiers, "But by situating the Republic in Hell, both through allusions to the Parliament of Hell genre and the Etruscans, and by comparisons that a contemporary reader could not have failed to remember that both sides of the Civil War applied to each other, Milton renders impossible any simple, stable interpretation of the poem's politics" (14).
