Him, fast sleeping, soon he found In labyrinth of many a round, self-rolled 

Gustave Doré made this engraving, depicting a scene from Milton's Paradise Lost, sometime in the 19th century. The image shows a pensive Satan perched on a rock, a large serpent coiled below him. Doré’s work circulated widely in an era of mass media, shaping popular conceptions of literature. This particular image speaks to anxieties of the time. Consider the visual cues: the forlorn posture of the once-angelic figure and the looming serpent, symbols of temptation and moral decay. In Victorian England, anxieties about industrialization, urbanization, and the decline of religious belief were common. Doré's image, therefore, reflects a broader cultural mood, using religious imagery to explore contemporary concerns. The engraving taps into a collective consciousness grappling with questions of morality, authority, and the consequences of progress. To fully grasp the impact of Doré's work, it's worth exploring how the printing press and publishing industries influenced the dissemination of images and ideas in the 19th century.