Utopia regained in some way or other. One way might be a quest for an "earthly paradise"—a place like Shangri-La, hidden in the Tibetan mountains and described by James Hilton in his utopian novel "Lost Horizon" (1933). Christopher Columbus followed directly in this tradition in his belief that he had found the Garden of Eden when, towards the end of the 15th century, he first encountered the New World and its indigenous inhabitants. Utopia A utopia ( ) is an imagined community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its citizens. The opposite of a utopia is
Paradise Lost have been well acquainted with his own genius, and to know what it was that Nature had bestowed upon him more bountifully than upon others: the power of displaying the vast, illuminating the splendid, enforcing the awful, darkening the gloomy, and aggravating the dreadful." Milton scholar John Leonard interpreted the "impious war" between Heaven and Hell as civil war: "Paradise Lost" is, among other things, a poem about civil war. Satan raises 'impious war in Heav'n' (i 43) by leading a third of the angels in revolt against God. The term 'impious war' implies that civil war is impious. But