The Satanic Epic

by Forsyth, Neil

• ISBN13: 9781400825233
• ISBN10: 1400825237
• Copyright: 2008-09-02
• 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"	p. 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	p. 56
Elizabethan Drama	p. 60
Politics	p. 62
The Miltonic Moment	p. 64
Subversive Satan	p. 66
Critical Controversies	p. 69
The Epic Voice	p. 77
Seeing through Satan	p. 77
Hope and Despair	p. 81
"Dark designs"	p. 86
"Devils into Dwarfs"	p. 87
The Critical Need for the Narrator	p. 90
Epic Similes	p. 100
Erring	p. 105
Parliamentary Devils	p. 108
Follow the Leader	p. 114
Chaos	p. 115
Approaching Paradise	p. 124
Satan's Entry into Paradise	p. 129
Paradise	p. 129
Sex	p. 134
"Myself Am Hell"	p. 147
Niphates	p. 148
Faustus and the Abyss	p. 152
God in Satan	p. 155
Hell in Heaven	p. 157
Witchcraft	p. 160
Satan's Rebellion	p. 167
Rebellion in Hesiod	p. 170
God's Creative Word	p. 171
Satan's Theology	p. 176
Sources of Satan's motive	p. 180
Hebrews	p. 183
Psalm 2	p. 185
The Language of "Evil"	p. 188
Classical versus Christian	p. 188
Hate in Heaven	p. 190
The "Problem of Evil"	p. 192
Satan and Ancient Evils	p. 195
Allecto: Hell's Fury	p. 196
The Darkness of Hell	p. 201
"God created evil"	p. 204
The Language of Sin	p. 206
Evil Eve	p. 207
Openings	p. 209
"Perverse"	p. 212
Odium Dei	p. 214
Of Mans First Dis	p. 217
Dis--	p. 218
Satan's "dark suggestions"	p. 221
Quibbles	p. 224
Vergil	p. 228
Ovid	p. 229
Dante	p. 233
Difference	p. 235
Homer in Milton: The Attendance Motif and the Graces	p. 239
Satan Tempter	p. 259
Intercourse	p. 259
"Stupidly good"	p. 261
Sexual Serpents	p. 263
Discourse	p. 265
The Seductive Text	p. 268
Commentators	p. 272
"What delight"	p. 277
Satan's Sewers	p. 280
Satanic Verses	p. 282
"If They Will Hear"	p. 285
At the Sign of the Dove and the Serpent	p. 301
Irenaeus	p. 303
The Wisdom of the Serpent	p. 304
Image	p. 305
The Brazen Serpent	p. 308
The Meaning of History	p. 309
Christ and Serpent	p. 311
"full of doubt istand" : the structures of paradiselost	p. 314
conclusion: signsportentous	p. 329
Apocalypse	p. 329
"Disastrous twilight"	p. 332
Editors	p. 338
Sun-Son	p. 341
Reading Signs	p. 342
"Good with bad expect to hear"	p. 344
Bibliography	p. 349
Index	p. 371
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