...to quote Bob Dylan. I had a query about Milton's representation of the Garden of Eden in Paradise Lost. Perhaps I should set the record straight here.
The Garden of Eden is not in Heaven but on Earth. Adam is created from earth, on Earth, and placed in the Garden of Eden by God, who then creates Eve from one of Adam’s ribs. The Garden of Eden is indeed ‘heavenly’, and Satan even seems to think that Earth might be better than Heaven. It is only with the Fall, when Adam and Eve eat of the Tree of Knowledge and bring death into the world, that Earth becomes the squalid, miserable place of which we have first-hand experience!
The passage in which Satan expresses his thoughts about earth can be found in book 9, lines 98-178 (but look especially at 98-102). There is an interesting essay on the Garden of Eden here. It goes into much more detail than you need, but take what you can from it.
I'll take this opportunity to remind you too of a couple of other sites I've mentioned before: the wonderful Darkness Visible, and the Luminarium pages on Paradise Lost. These are perfect revision aids! They are also much more trustworthy, accurate, and scholarly than sites such as enotes and sparknotes.There is also the text of a very interesting introductory lecture on Paradise Lost here. It discusses Paradise Lost as an epic, Milton's Protestantism, the critical debates about the poem, and the key characters.
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