The Satanic Epic

by Forsyth, Neil

• ISBN13: 9780691113395
• ISBN10: 0691113394
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-12-09
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

The Satan ofParadise Losthas 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 ofParadise Lostin 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	p. ix
Introduction	p. 1
""Too full of the Devill""	p. 1
""God is not the devil""	p. 8
The Narrative Theology of ""therefore""	p. 12
""The most heroic subject that ever was chosen"" 18
A Brief History of Satan	p. 24
The Old Enemy	p. 25
Ancient Myth and Epic	p. 28
Hesiod	p. 30
Apocalypses	p. 35
The satan	p. 37
The New Testament	p. 39
The Early Church	p. 43
Heresy	p. 45
Medieval Heresy	p. 49
Old English Genesis to Chaucer	p. 50
Satan's Rebellion	p. 54
Warfare and Imperialism 56
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