Surprisingly, Milton represents Hell, Heaven and Eden as regions in process: their physical conditions are fitted to the beings that inhabit them, but these inhabitants interact with and shape their environments, creating societies in their own image. Hell is first presented in traditional terms, with the fallen angels chained on a lake of fire. But unlike Dante’s Inferno, where the damned are confined within distinct circles to endure eternally repeated punishments, Milton presents a damned society in the making, with Royalist politics, perverted language, perverse rhetoric, political manipulation and demagoguery. His fallen angels mine gold and gems, build a government centre (Pandaemonium), hold a parliament, send Satan on a mission of exploration and conquest, investigate their spacious and varied though sterile landscape, engage in martial games and parades, perform music, compose epic poems about their own deeds and argue (without resolving) hard philosophical questions about fate and freewill.

Barbara K. Lewalski. (2010). Milton: Paradise Lost, Paradise Regained, Samson Agonistes. In: Michael O'Neill (ed.) The Cambridge History of English Poetry. pp. 255-280. [Online]. The Cambridge History of English Poetry. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Available from: Cambridge Histories Online < http://dx.doi.org.proxy.lib.ohio-state.edu/10.1017/CHOL9780521883061.016> [Accessed 23 October 2014].

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