The two poets of Robert McMahon's study are John Milton, the author of Paradise Lost and his Bard, the narrator within that epic. Most scholars blur the two into Milton the historic person/poet, but McMahon makes a clear distinction that begets an alternative understanding of the poem as a whole. He argues that the Bard is a fictional character created by Milton and that the Bard's own implied story unfolds as he sings his account of the Fall. In...