From Purgatory to the Paradise of Fools: Dante, Ariosto, and Milton

If we trace the sources of Milton's Paradise of Fools, or Limbo of Vanity, his other name for that strange region Satan finds while flying from Hell to Eden in Book III of Paradise Lost, aren't we led most logically to Dante's Limbo, and not to his Purgatory? Most editors and commentators have assumed, and with good reason, that Milton's Limbo functions in some way as a literary allusion to Dante's first circle of Hell, which is Dante's Limbo. After probing that assumption, however, even such a distinguished Miltonist as Merritt Y. Hughes lamented that as far as he could tell Milton's Limbo has nothing to do with Dante's. Hughes offered Plato as the most significant influence on this section of Paradise Lost, but, as I hope to show, Dante is relevant, though not in so simple a way as critics have believed.1 In addition, critics and commentators have assumed, because of Milton's reference in this passage to the canto in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso where Astolfo, the English knighterrant, flies to the moon, that Milton has Ariosto very much in mind as a complementary source. After all, the narrator of Paradise Lost rather bluntly tells us that all the strange things with which Ariosto littered his lunar terrain are to be found in Milton's Limbo, and Not in the neighboring Moon, as some have dream'd.2 Ariosto stands corrected. Milton never minded correcting those in error, of course, and he does not hesitate here. But before we nod in complacent agreement about this familiar aspect of the Milton we know and love, we should stop over the fact that Milton's Limbo is as much a literary fantasy as Ariosto's moon ever was. And Milton knew that, of course. So why this mock correction of one playful fantasy with another fantasy, equally invalid so far as strict truth is concerned?