The Satanic Epic

by Forsyth, Neil

• ISBN13: 9780691099965
• ISBN10: 0691099960
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-12-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

The 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.Neil Forsyth argues that William Blake got it right when he called Milton a true poet because he was "of the Devils party" even though he set out "to justify the ways of God to men." In seeking to learn why Satan is so alluring, Forsyth ranges over diverse topics--from the origins of evil and the relevance of witchcraft to the status of the poetic narrator, the epic tradition, the nature of love between the sexes, and seventeenth-century astronomy. He considers each of these as Milton introduces them: as Satanic subjects.Satan emerges as the main challenge to Christian belief. It is Satan who questions and wonders and denounces. He is the great doubter who gives voice to many of the arguments that Christianity has provoked from within and without. And by rooting his Satanic reading of Paradise Lost in Biblical and other sources, Forsyth retrieves not only an attractive and heroic Satan but a Milton whose heretical energies are embodied in a Satanic character with a life of his own.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Introduction	1	(1)
``Too full of the Devill''	1	(7)
``God is not the devil''	8	(4)
The Narrative Theology of ``therefore''	12	(6)
``The most heroic subject that ever was chosen''	18	(6)
A Brief History of Satan	24	(53)
The Old Enemy	25	(3)
Ancient Myth and Epic	28	(2)
Hesiod	30	(5)
Apocalypses	35	(2)
The satan	37	(2)
The New Testament	39	(4)
The Early Church	43	(2)
Heresy	45	(4)
Medieval Heresy	49	(1)
Old English Genesis to Chaucer	50	(4)
Satan's Rebellion	54	(2)
Warfare and Imperialism	56	(4)
Elizabethan Drama	60	(2)
Politics	62	(2)
The Miltonic Moment	64	(2)
Subversive Satan	66	(3)
Critical Controversies	69	(8)
The Epic Voice	77	(37)
Seeing through Satan	77	(4)
Hope and Despair	81	(5)
``Dark designs''	86	(1)
``Devils into Dwarfs''	87	(3)
The Critical Need for the Narrator	90	(10)
Epic Similes	100	(5)
Erring	105	(3)
Parliamentary Devils	108	(6)
Follow the Leader	114	(33)
Chaos	115	(9)
Approaching Paradise	124	(5)
Satan's Entry into Paradise	129	(1)
Paradise	129	(5)
Sex	134	(13)
``My Self Am Hell''	147	(20)
Niphates	148	(4)
Faustus and the Abyss	152	(3)
God in Satan	155	(2)
Hell in Heaven	157	(3)
Witchcraft	160	(7)
Satan's Rebellion	167	(21)
Rebellion in Hesiod	170	(1)
God's Creative Word	171	(5)
Satan's Theology	176	(4)
Sources of Satan's motive	180	(3)
Hebrews	183	(2)
Psalm 2	185	(3)
The Language of ``Evil''	188	(29)
Classical versus Christian	188	(2)
Hate in Heaven	190	(2)
The ``Problem of Evil''	192	(3)
Satan and Ancient Evils	195	(1)
Allecto: Hell's Fury	196	(5)
The Darkness of Hell	201	(3)
``God created evil''	204	(2)
The Language of Sin	206	(1)
Evil Eve	207	(2)
Openings	209	(3)
``Perverse''	212	(2)
Odium Dei	214	(3)
Of Mans First Dis	217	(22)
Dis---	218	(3)
Satan's ``dark suggestions''	221	(3)
Quibbles	224	(4)
Vergil	228	(1)
Ovid	229	(4)
Dante	233	(2)
Difference	235	(4)
Homer in Milton: The Attendance Motif and the Graces	239	(20)
Satan Tempter	259	(26)
Intercourse	259	(2)
``Stupidly good''	261	(2)
Sexual Serpents	263	(2)
Discourse	265	(3)
The Seductive Text	268	(4)
Commentators	272	(5)
``What delight''	277	(3)
Satan's Sewers	280	(2)
Satanic Verses	282	(3)
``If They Will Hear''	285	(16)
At the Sign of the Dove and Serpent	301	(13)
Irenaeus	303	(1)
The Wisdom of the Serpent	304	(1)
Image	305	(3)
The Brazen Serpent	308	(1)
The Meaning of History	309	(2)
Christ and Serpent	311	(3)
``Full of Doubt I Stand'': The Structures of Paradise Lost	314	(15)
CONCLUSION: SIGNS PORTENTOUS	329	(20)
Apocalypse	329	(3)
``Disastrous twilight''	332	(6)
Editors	338	(3)
Sun-Son	341	(1)
Reading Signs	342	(2)
``Good with bad expect to hear''	344	(5)
Bibliography	349	(22)
Index	371