A Macro-Etymological Analysis of Milton’s Paradise Lost

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One of Milton’s terms for the expansive, empty gulf separating the Earth from Hell is the “abyss.” The word appears eighteen times in Paradise Lost , and in seven out of twelve of the poem’s books. It is variously described as “vast,” “dark,” “infinite,” “hollow,” “wild,” “wide,” “desolate,” and “vexed,” (1.21, 2.405, 2.518, 2.910, 3.84, 4.936, 10.314) but also more epistemologically as…

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