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canto X with its focus on mimetic art, so lifelike as to blur the lines, makes me think of Tolkien's faerian drama

The address to Florence hits a little too close to home these days: "Athens and Sparta, which made the ancient laws and had such civil order, gave only hints of the good life compared to you, who make such fine provisions that the threads you've spun but in October do not survive to mid-November. How many times within your memory have you changed laws, coinage, offices, as well as customs, and renewed your members?"

Unlike Tolkien's orcs, Milton's devils are capable of "firm concord" (2.497) and even harmony which "Suspended Hell and took with ravishment / The thronging audience" (2.554-555). And the latter is in direct contrast to the rebellion of Melkor in Tolkien's creation story.

For this one, I'm alternating Sayers and the Hollanders.