When Fish published Surprised by Sin in 1967, the "Milton Controversy" of the 1940s and 1950s still undergirded most criticism of Paradise Lost with its debates over the attractiveness of Satan, the unattractiveness of God, the judgments of the epic narrator and, in general, Milton's constant demand that we accept "his religious mood," making it hard for us to grant him a "'willing suspension of disbelief'-the condition," according to academic commonplace,"on which alone most people today can enjoy religious poetry."