Carrol ---------------------
``...Reality of this order consisted of universals, and the activity of reason consisted of the intellect's ascent to recognition of the timeless rationality of universals.'' Pocock
The above quote seems to accord pretty well with both medieval thought and Aristotle. But I agree, other parts of the quoted passage are confusing.
I suspect what Pocock was trying to do is describe the hierarchy of descend from universal into particular and back up again. Below is a quote from (on-line) Stanford's Encyclopedia of Philosophy
``... in works other than the Categories, Aristotle uses the label `universals' (ta katholou) for the things that are `said of many;' things that are not universal he calls `particulars' (ta kath' hekasta). Although he does not use these labels in the Categories, it is not misleading to say that the doctrine of the Categories is that each category contains a hierarchy of universals and particulars, with each universal being `said of' the lower-level universals and particulars that fall beneath it. Each category thus has the structure of an upside-down tree.[2] At the top (or trunk) of the tree are the most generic items in that category[3] (e.g., in the case of the category of substance, the genus plant and the genus animal); branching below them are universals at the next highest level, and branching below these are found lower levels of universals, and so on, down to the lowest level universals (e.g., such infimae species as man and horse); at the lowest level - the leaves of the tree - are found the individual substances, e.g., this man, that horse, etc.''
Another way to think about it is a set or class, with a generic definition, and its elements which all share at least one particular characteristic although they differ in various individual ways.
An example. Dante's Inferno is structured in nine circles, each labeled with a sin of some sort. The first circle is limbo and it is modeled on Elysian fields. Nobody sinned, they just didn't know God. They are waiting. Some circles are further subdivided. The sin represents the category or universal character of the offense according to Catholic doctrine. The people Dante and Virgil meet represent a particular or individual character, sometimes mythological, historical, or sometimes real Florentine that shared the characteristic sin, say violence in one circle or in a lower circle, fraud. The lowest circle, the nineth is reserved for the greatest treasons or betrayals and have three grand offenders: Brutus, Cassius, and Judas, being eaten by Satan's three heads who is a giant buried waist deep in a frozen lake. This is allegorical mirror to the Trinity. There's lots more delicious detail I've forgotten.
I haven't read it in a long time. As I remember, Virgil explains the `reasoning' for the punishment or the general nature of what class of sinner suffers in this or that particular circle. The punishments are allegorical reciprocity, but there is always a sense of `logic' behind them. Sometimes Dante finds somebody he knows---usually an enemy. He was in exile from Florence so he had plenty of grudges. The circle itself represents a timeless and endless path that must be traversed over and over. Most of the circles feature crowds in ceaseless movement on these endless paths.
Anyway there are a lot of theories about this transition from a medieval frame of mind to a renaissance frame. There are a lot of differences between places like northern Italy, Germany, Netherlands, and say England. And it is certainly easier to see the physical representation differences in the visual arts, rather than to tease them out of written work. I never read Milton, so I can't say much about Paradise Lost, except to note the date (1667) which is already into the early Enlightenment. The Divine Comedy was written between (1308-1321). Art history puts the transition between medieval and renaissance with Giotto (1267-1337), so he is one of Dante's contemporaries. Also English cultural history seems to lag in this transition. This difference between the English and Italians is pretty famous and interesting, but that's another overly long post.
CG