Misery, Love, and Company: Paradise Lost and the Origins of Consolation

This essay examines three moments of consolation in Paradise Lost: Satan’s speeches to the demons, Michael’s teaching of Adam, and Adam and Eve’s “commiseration” after the Fall. Milton uses these scenes to weigh the benefits and limitations of various modes of consolation. In contrast to Michael’s pedagogical consolation and Satan’s philosophical consolation, the epic finally favors the humans’ more socially oriented model of consolation rooted in community and shared emotional experience.