The Absence of Allegory: A Brief History of Misreading the Structural Dynamics of Paradise Lost

Despite allegory's rehabilitation during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, most critics continue to deny its existence or strictly limit its uses in Paradise Lost to fallen scenes. This article traces both the semantic errors behind this practice and their eighteenth and nineteenth century origins, when allegory's positive reputation for lively imaginative invention was at once reversed and transposed on to closely related literary forms—typology, symbolism, and accommodation—not truly separable from allegory itself. Reexamining major Edenic and heavenly scenes and over-arching epic patterns shows how full-scale, multilevel allegory is not only integral to Milton's design but cannot be understood without it.