Salem Press

Cyclopedia of Literary Places
Paradise Lost

Author: John Milton (1608-1674)
Type of Work: Poetry
Type of Plot: Epic
Time of Plot: Creation of the world
First Published: 1667

While Heaven, Hell, and paradise (Eden) of Judeo-Christian tradition were already established by John Milton's time, his imaginative powers make these settings his own. It is no exaggeration to say that traditional Western images of these three places derive in large part from Milton's epic. Milton's images of Hell rival Dante's, while those of paradise make use of his considerable lyrical powers in offering a sense of the beauty of natural creation before the Fall.

Heaven
Unlike the other places described by Milton in Paradise Lost, the scenes in heaven are not memorable for their physical description. When God the Father and his Son Jesus speak in book 3, they do so from the heights of Heaven. All the speaker asserts about the scene of this dialogue is that it is high above both Earth and Hell, and that it is bathed in celestial light. God's throne is mentioned, along with the choirs of angels surrounding it, but traditional images of clouds and stars are absent. The book opens with Milton's famous hymn to light and the overall effect is the repeated emphasis on the brilliance of the empyrean, the highest heaven which, in the medieval cosmology surviving in Milton's day, was the home of God and the angels.

Hell
The underworld into which the rebel angels fall in book 1 of Milton's epic is the first fully visualized scene. After describing the precipitous fall of Satan and his cohorts amid the chaos of floods and whirlwinds, Milton has the demons remark on how different this place appears in comparison with the Heaven from which they have come. Just as Heaven is characterized mostly by light in book 3, Hell is known by its dimness. Even flames give forth no light, and there is no land, though Milton teases the reader's visual imagination by speaking of lakes of liquid fire and lands of solid fire. Specific locations within Hell include its capital, Pandemonium; the large gates through which Satan flies; and the Paradise of Fools, a borderland where foolish monks believe in their vanity that they are in Heaven.

Pandemonium
Word coined by Milton to describe the capital of Hell in this epic that now has a broader meaning. Milton invented the word by analogy with the Pantheon, the temple of all gods in ancient Rome. The Pandemonium is thus an infernal temple honoring all demons. Milton describes it near the end of book 1, and the first half of book 2 takes place there as well. As in Milton's other place descriptions in Paradise Lost, the emphasis is on the spaciousness of this capital of Hell, the throngs of demons filling the hall, the wide gates and porches. Yet, since Milton is using this spaciousness as an emblem of greatness, he effects a sudden change in point of view at the end of book 1, making the demons, who seemed gigantic, become minuscule. The change is due to their fall, which has just taken place. In Pandemonium, as elsewhere in Milton's cosmology, place has moral significance.

Garden of Eden
Biblical site in which the bulk of Paradise Lost after book 3 takes place. For Adam and Eve, the physical beauty of paradise represents the unfallen world. They are in harmony with all creatures, and they receive all the food they need without effort. To Satan, however, the place represents a painful reminder of all the joys he and the other fallen angels have lost forever. His first reflection on the sight of Eden, near the beginning of book 4, is a curse hurled at the Sun for showing him its beauties. There, it becomes clear that place is a function of one's moral state. For example, Satan, though in paradise, brings his Hell with him because of his unrepentant, fallen nature. Conversely, at the end of the epic, Adam and Eve, though banished from paradise, carry a small reflection of it with them in their love for each other.

John R. Holmes