Dante in Milton's Paradise Lost: Inferno

Link:  In RR stacks at the B level.

In Book One of Paradise Lost, Milton describes Hell as the place “where peace / and rest can never dwell.”  This line echoes the tempestuous chaos that pervades Circle 2. Although the restlessness is not as vivid as Inferno, the rebel angels experience this restlessness all the same since they do very human things as Satan flies to Earth.  Furthermore, Satan agonizes over the despair and wrath that hound him.  Milton's portrayal of Satan combines the sins and punishments of Inferno: the transformation into snakes at the end resembles the bolgia of thieves in that Satan robs the first people of innocence, sword of Michael in the war resembles the schismatics in that Satan separated Heaven's angels and suffered and healed the cuts from the sword, and the internal tempest that never stops is the lust that birthed Sin.  Dante's Satan resides at the bottom of Hell, and both Milton and Dante recognize that all sin came from Satan.

Milton’s Satan, as the Great Deceiver, is similar to the beast of fraud Geryon. Neither flies straight to their destination, but each take a circuitous route.  This nonlinear movement suggests the circuitous rhetoric a deceiver makes, but the eventual arrival indicates a strong goal or ambition that lies underneath the speech. In Book 4, the angels who sided with God can see through Satan's false light, revealing him to be a foul creature of Hell.  In addition, Satan is totally oblivious to his real nature, vainly concerned with his appearance.   Satan's cluelessness represents the power of fraud to deceive the deceiver himself.  As Human Reason, Virgil sees through Geryon and positions himself between the Geryon's stinger and Dante to protect him.

Milton attacks the powerful emptiness of rhetoric through Satan’s extraordinary persuasiveness to get his evil way.  Similarly, Dante attacks empty rhetoric through Ulysses’s story as he coaxes his companions to head into folly.  Both authors caution against following the literal and for finding the substance behind the words, though for different reasons.  In Milton's time, the government censored material to suppress rebellion as well as to keep pure minds.  However, Milton argued that censorship only coddles minds, leaving them unable to think independently.  Those with strong minds will naturally choose the good and reject the bad.  For Dante, empty rhetoric can simulate virtue, and too many people fall for guile such as Guido da Montefeltro who believed in Boniface's reassurance.  Both men, in short, argue for people to think independently that would naturally draw them to God as the ultimate good.