<Original Paper>Milton\u27s Picture of the Cosmos in Paradise Lost, Books II&III, and Copernicus

When Milton wrote Paradise Lost it was still a matter of dispute whether Copernicus and Galileo were right and the earth revolved on its axis, or whether the old view that matched "the Appearances" still held true-for it certainly appears that the heavens revolve around us. Even Francis Bacon, the opponent of Scholastic and Aristotelian authoritarianism, found it "a hard thing that Copernicus separated the Sun from the company of the planets." Milton who, aged 29,had visited the old Galileo imprisoned at his villa and looked through his telescope, adapts in Book III, to describe Satan\u27s travels, a traditional theme based on the old cosmology : "the Journey through the Seven Planetary Spheres"; and he has "the utmost Orb" of this World, "the starry Sphere, " enclosing "the luminous inferior Orbs"-the same image of the world that he could find in Plato. But he is careful not to say that the earth is in the center