SOURCE: "The Political Implications of Paradise Regained," in The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, Vol. XL, No. 4, October, 1941, pp. 482-88.

In the essay below, Fink explores seventeenth-century political understandings of the notion of dictatorship. He maintains that the depiction of Satan as a dictator in Paradise Regained underscores Milton's rejection of the need for a dictator in a healthy commonwealth.

When Satan lays before his followers in Paradise Regained the situation which has arisen from the appearance of Christ, they are appalled at the danger which confronts them and turn over to him all authority in the matter:

 Unanimous they all commit the care
And management of this main enterprize
To him their great Dictator …"1 

This passage has received singularly little attention from Milton scholars, the chief comment on it being the correct enough but not very illuminating one by Thyer which appears in the editions of...