Paradises Lost and Found: The Meaning and Function of the “Paradise Within” in “Paradise Lost”

ABSTRACT Michael, in Book XII of John Milton's Paradise Lost, promises Adam that the woeful consequences of his Fall may be mitigated by the achievement of a “Paradise within.” This inner paradise differs both from the irrecoverably lost paradise of Eden and from the “perfect glorification” of the faithful in an actual eternal paradise at the end of the world. The paradise promised Adam and his progeny in this world is that “imperfect glorification” characterized in Christian Doctrine Bk. II, ch. 25, as “the state wherein... we are filled with a consciousness of present grace and excellency, as well as with an expectation of future glory, inasmuch that our blessedness is in a manner already begun.” To partake of this blessedness one must participate in the divine vision of time as a single moment. For Adam, Michael in the last two books of Paradise Lost makes possible such participation. Through style and structure the epic as a whole encompasses in a single poetic unity both the temporal reality of the loss occasioned by the Fall and the eternal actuality of God's glorification of the faithful. It thus not only embodies the poet's participation in the eternal vision, but also allows a reader to share in it, and thereby discern the possible paradise within himself.