This article explores Milton’s engagement with his biblical model for the epic genre throughout his diffuse epic. Paradise Lost draws from Job in its depictions of the wonder of creation, the agony of despair, and the boldness of a creature to question the creator. While some Renaissance commentators find the combativeness of Job’s complaint to be theologically problematic, Milton infuses it into his depictions of the unfallen Adam and the Son who exercise the digestive functions of reason in their freedom to debate with God. These Joban echoes demonstrate that hubristic presumption directed toward dialogue with the creator is characteristic of the righteous; it is the rigidity of despair that avoids such dialogue and leads to the Fall. In the end, through a network of carefully placed allusions to the scriptural epic of suffering, Milton achieves a model of righteous questioning as a safeguard against error and despair.

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More’s most popular contribution to sixteenth-century humanism during his lifetime was a showcase of classical rhetorical styles: in 1506 he and Erasmus published their translations of several Lucianic satires, along with a declamation defending tyrannicide and their own declamations in response. As More engages the Greek satirist, he employs rhetorical tactics partially derived from Cicero’s three styles but with an Augustinian forcefulness that adapts the classical tria genera dicendi to his own literary objectives. Yet with his three distinct rhetorical styles that roughly approximate the plain, middle, and grand styles of the classical oration, More demonstrates that just as tyranny is an affront against the law, human nature, and the gods, those who oppose tyranny can only do so on those grounds. Through this criticism of the opportunistic assassin, we may understand the shades of ambivalence that obscure his indictment against tyranny in his contemporaneous Richard III, Utopia, and epigrams.

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Though the obvious understanding of Thomas More’s Epigrammata, initially published with the 1518 edition of Utopia, is that of the poetic portfolio of a rising statesman, the intensity of the proceeding dispute with the French poet Brixius indicates a significance beyond the poems at hand. As his letter in response to Brixius explains, More writes with a particular concern for the plight of poetry and the character of the poet. Though he criticizes Brixius for cheap imitation of the ancients, he adapts and composes lines capable of containing both the mockery and the moralizing of his Latin and Greek predecessors. While it is undoubtedly More’s wit that commends his collection to his contemporaries, it is his commitment to truth that proves transformative in the development of the Renaissance epigram. These often-neglected poems and their commitment to laughter and learning may inform our understanding of the author and his ever-celebrated works.