title: The Cambridge Companion to Paradise Lost (Cambridge Companions to Literature)
author: Louis Schwartz
description: This Companion features short, accessible essays from fifteen recognized Milton specialists touching on the most important topics and themes in Paradise Lost. The essays invite readers to begin their own independent exploration of the poem by equipping them with useful background knowledge, introducing them to key passages, and acquainting them with the current state of critical debates.
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  > For Laurie Fox
  
  > And in loving memory of Katherine Donner and Laura Geist
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Farewell happy fields,
  
  
  Where joy forever dwells: Hail horrors, hail
  
  
  Infernal world, and thou profoundest hell
  
  
  Receive thy new possessor; one who brings
  
  
  A mind not to be changed by place or time.
  
  
  The mind is its own place, and in itself
  
  
  Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.
  
  
  —JOHN MILTON, PARADISE LOST
  
  
  Life is