he earlier seventeenth century, construed as the period extending roughly from the beginning of James I's reign to the restoration of Charles II, witnessed an unparalleled poetic achievement in England. This achievement flourished in part because of the specific transitions England underwent in the period. The institutions upon which the society rested were challenged, which led to unprecedented opportunity for experiment in politics as in poetry. But most of the poetic institutions were in place even before this period began emerging from the tremendous dramatic and non dramatic achievements of the 1590s and they continued beyond the restoration producing the consummate example of Renaissance epic in English, Milton's Paradise Lost (1667), well after the "Renaissance" had ended.