ABSTRACT
A parallel appears between the Satan narrative and Godly narrative as theorized by Milton and mediated by hexameron. The transformation of scientific and geographic space is suddenly revealed as symbolically over determining the volatility of satanic gesture, the dramatically ambivalent narrative space of epic hexameron. The symbolic political fulfilment of epic gesture reveals itself to be mere wish-fulfilment, as satanic gesture undergoes psychological distortion into an allegorical image. This symbolic fulfilment is drained and distorted by the dramatic form of the Satan narrative as it intersects with gesture. Allegorical tragedy produces and highlights the very abstractness of activity that political libido is in some sense a reaction against, and so works to transform the material ethos of epic into abstract desire in the very act of making it symbolic. The allegorization of gesture may be seen, then, as a recontainment of political desire by the theological code of the hexameron.
