I am zipping along in my listening to Paradise Lost, and have enjoyed some discussion of Milton from a previous post. This put me in mind of how I use some other poetry by Milton in my composition class.
One of the things I do is teach through the progymnasmata in about three semesters, including the exercise of comparison. In comparison, of course, we pit two people or things against each other, discussing their similarities and differences, comparing their strengths and weaknesses, praising them for virtue (encomium) or blaming then for vice (invective). I use Milton's companion pieces (which may have, indeed, been formed by this experience of writing comparisons), L'Allegro and Il Penseroso, and we do a variety of things with them: first, we endeavor to understand the meaning behind the beauty of the language and the richness of the allusions, then we write essays that present the same ideas in prose, and finally write a comparison between the life of sociability and the life of contemplation. What fun!
If you like the idea of comparison, you can see the text and examples from the medieval grand-daddy of all rhetorical teachers, Aphthonius, here, and read his comparison of Achilles and Hector, along with his examples of the other progym exercises. Don't miss his invective on Phillip of Macedon: there is definitely no love lost there!
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