ABSTRACT
At critical points in their destinies, characters in Milton's last three poems often speak in blank verse sonnets to pledge their acceptance of one another, of themselves, or of divine purposes. These blank verse units of fourteen lines, which display structural proportions similar to those of Milton's rhymed sonnets, generally recall and extend the traditional function of the form as a love poem. In Paradise Lost, they often accompany the resolutions of characters to embody gestures of reconciliation. They are a way of revealing the spiritual identities of both speakers in Paradise Regained and of epitomizing Christ's assent to his mission. To signify acceptance of divine ways, they point to the farewell speeches of Samson and the chorus. Milton's blank verse sonnets appear throughout the major poems and always in the conclusions of narrative or dramatic actions, where they help him impart a final, Christian perspective and form to the larger forms and structural patterns he inherits from classical epic and dramatic traditions.
