It's Time: Milton's Manipulation of Time in Paradise Lost

In class, we talked about how Milton bends time and takes things out of chronological order, but he does more than that with time in Paradise Lost. I noticed in particular with the meeting of the fallen angels. He mentions devils such as Moloch, or Beelzebub and then proceeds to mention a lot of their deeds and how they have affected men and such. However, while these things according to chronology haven’t happened yet, they are referred to as the past. An example is when one of the demons, Moloch is described by his actions toward men: "the wisest heart / of Solomon he led by fraud to build / his temple right against the temple of God" (400-02). Here, Moloch's actions are described in the past tense, even though they haven't happened yet in the narrative. This is done for several other devils and fallen angels. It's an interesting paradox that I decided to research more.