Paradise of Fools

The Paradise of Fools is a literary and historical topic and theme found in many Christian works. A traditional train of thought held that it is the place where fools or idiots were sent after death: intellectually incompetent to be held responsible for their deeds, they cannot be punished for them in hell, atone for them in purgatory, or be rewarded for them in heaven.^[1] It is usually to be read allegorically, though what precisely is allegorized differs from author to author,^[2] and often its location is in the lunar sphere.

One of the most notable examples of the Paradise of Fools is found in Book 3 of John Milton's Paradise Lost, where Milton, in the narrative of Satan's journey to Earth, reserves a space for future fools (Milton also calls it the "Limbo of Vanity"), specifically Catholic clergy and "fleeting wits".^[2] Milton's satirical allegory in turn was inspired by Ludovico Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1516); Samuel Johnson, in Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets, stated that the allegory "disgraced" Milton's epic.^[3]

The ancestry of Milton's Paradise of Fools includes Canto XXXIV of Orlando and Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy. As John Wooten argued, that canto in Orlando contains a summarizing critique of Dante's entire Comedy—a descent into Hell, followed by an ascent to a mountain top (Dante's Earthly Paradise) and a flight to the Moon: "with the greatest ironic debunking, the moon ... is Ariosto's allegorical substitute for the complex theology and metaphysics of Dante's Paradiso".^[4] In turn, Milton's Paradise of Fools builds on Ariosto's mock version of Dante's Comedy, but adds a specifically anti-Catholic aspect by making fun of hermits, friars, Dominicans, Franciscans—those equipped with "Reliques, Beads, / Indulgences, Dispenses, Pardons, Bulls". Central is the punishment of vanity; it is the place for "all things transitory and vain, when Sin / With vanity had fill'd the works of men: / Both all things vain, and all who in vain things / Built thir fond hopes of Glory or lasting fame" (III.446-49). Milton also "corrects" Ariosto; the Paradise of Fools is "Not in the neighboring Moon, as some have dream'd" (III.459)--a "mock correction", as Wooten calls it.^[5]

• Brewer, E. C. (2001). The Wordsworth Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. Wordsworth Editions. p. 669. ISBN 9781840223101. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
• Johnson, Samuel (1832). "Lives of the Most Eminent English Poets: Milton". In Murphy, Arthur (ed.). The Works of Samuel Johnson, LL. D.: With an Essay on His Life and Genius. G. Dearborn. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
• Treip, Mindele A. (1994). Allegorical poetics and the epic: the Renaissance tradition to Paradise lost. UP of Kentucky. ISBN 9780813118314. Retrieved 2 April 2013.
• Wooten, John (1982). "From Purgatory to the Paradise of Fools: Dante, Ariosto, and Milton". ELH. 49 (4): 741–50. doi:10.2307/2872895. JSTOR 2872895.