Satan

In 1727, French Enlightenment thinker Voltaire proposed that ‘if God, if the angels, if Satan would speak, I believe they would speak as they do in Milton’. 1 As is amply documented, the striking character of Satan in Paradise Lost has attracted much attention and debate since the poem’s fi rst publication in 1667. Several seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century critics highlighted Milton’s presentation of Satan as heroic, while Charles Leslie, in 1698, condemned Satan’s ‘self-existing’ nature as a deep theological blasphemy. 2 In doing so, he provided one of the earliest indications of the contentious fi gure that, for generations of readers and critics, Milton’s Satan would become. The Romantics, on the whole, considered Satan as a ‘prototype of revolutionary heroism’, the hero of Paradise Lost . 3 By contrast, in the fi rst half of the twentieth century, some critics argued rather simplistically that Satan was a degraded fool undeserving of our sympathy. 4 In the second half of the century, scholarly emphasis shifted to the relation between Satan and God the Father, as well as Satan and human life. Some of the themes discussed by critics in this period are relevant to this study, since they coincide with aspects of the Arab-Muslim reception of Satan. These include William Empson’s suggestion that Satan’s battle with the Father is ‘God’s plan . . . intended to lead him into greater evil’, making the Father responsible for manoeuvring the Satanic plot. 5 Dennis Danielson adds that Satan acts as a ‘theodical paradigm’ showing that despite the existence of evil, God remains omniscient and omnipotent; in turn, Satan is used to justify God’s ways. 6 Analyses of Milton’s depiction of Satan then led away from critical concern with theodicy towards interest in the responses of readers to his complex character. Stanley Fish, for instance, argued that Satan is presented in both heroic and foolish ways in order for readers to explore their own morals, a view which became common, particularly in the U.S. 7 John Carey added that Satan’s state of mind is like our own, and it is the doubt in Satan’s thinking which makes him more gripping to readers and induces sympathy. 8 Roland Frye showed that Satan is an attractive hero, but that Milton made Satan appealing in order for the latter to represent ‘the model for mankind’.