“‘Oh, how unlike the place from whence they fell!" John Milton’s Primordial Hell in Paradise Lost

John Milton’s biblical epic Paradise Lost (1674) famously begins in hell. Unlike Virgil’s Hades or Dante’s Inferno, which are situated at the centre of the earth, Milton locates his infernal realm in outer chaos, arguing that hell was perhaps created before the earth and certainly before the earth was corrupted by the Fall of mankind. It is only in Book x after Adam and Eve have eaten the apple that Sin and Death build a bridge connecting hell to earth. These spatial and temporal specifications have implications for the kind of hell we encounter. This chapter argues that Milton is exceptional in evoking a primordial hell, the place prepared for Satan and the rebel angels rather than the hell destined for the wicked after the Last Judgement. It is a place reserved for the mighty, embodied fallen angels who, far from the sadistic demons of the homiletic visual tradition, have not yet lost all their original beauty and angelic features. After exploring the biblical and patristic sources that Milton drew on for his infernal narrative and commented on in his De Doctrina Christiana, I analyze the experience of this unique hellscape. These sophisticated infernal inhabitants are still capable of suffering the torment of exile from the beatific vision of God – poena damni – as well as everlasting pain – poena sensus. If this hellscape is rendered in painful detail, Milton is reluctant to dwell on human punishment after death. Indeed, the Archangel Michael’s prophesy to Adam ends by focusing not on divine retribution but on grace and eternal bliss.