The Satanic EpicThe Satan of Paradise Lost has fascinated generations of readers. This book attempts to explain how and why Milton's Satan is so seductive. It reasserts the importance of Satan against those who would minimize the poem's sympathy for the devil and thereby make Milton orthodox. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 79
... means of moving beyond the unthinking distortions of orthodoxy into the realm of truth.10 This view has little in common with the Shelleys', beyond the refusal to admit an orthodox Milton. Otherwise “constant labor, tireless seeking ...
... means “profligacy,” and is a casual curse in Hebrew, (“worthless”). Surely any reader would recognize that what is said of him applies more obviously to the Royalists, the cavaliers of Milton's own immedi- ate experience, those ...
... mean? The likeness of Satan, in one sense, is the poem itself. Dennis Burden argued in his book, The Logical Epic, that inside the godly or Adamic narrative that Milton wrote there was a parallel Satanic epic trying to get out. Satan's ...
... means simply the decree of God: “In the day we eate / Of this fair Fruit, our doom is, we shall die” (9.762–63). He shows how closely the two epics are juxtaposed, for example, in Book 9, when Satan, following Genesis 3.5, appeals to ...
... mean simply the the- ory, well argued by humanist critics, that the complexities of our freedom and happiness make the Fall fortunate, but rather that, according to God's logic, Satan is actually necessary for salvation. To be sure this ...
Contents
1 | |
24 | |
2 THE EPIC VOICE | 77 |
3 FOLLOW THE LEADER | 114 |
4 MY SELF AM HELL | 147 |
5 SATANS REBELLION | 167 |
6 THE LANGUAGE OF EVIL | 188 |
7 OF MANS FIRST DIS | 217 |
9 SATAN TEMPTER | 259 |
10 IF THEY WILL HEAR | 285 |
11 AT THE SIGN OF THE DOVE AND SERPENT | 301 |
THE STRUCTURES OF PARADISE LOST | 314 |
SIGNS PORTENTOUS | 329 |
BIBLIOGRAPHY | 349 |
INDEX | 371 |
THE ATTENDANCE MOTIF AND THE GRACES | 239 |