ABSTRACT
A traditional equation by conservatives that modern revolution equals Lucifer's rebellion met with a variety of responses from the disparate opposition forces. The traditional image of Satan, derived in part from the poems of Dante and Torquato Tasso, envisions Satan and his rebel angels as evil, monstrous and deformed. Medina's image for the opening scene of the poem, in which the fallen Satan drags himself to his feet and calls his forces again to battle is clearly within the traditional norms of presenting the defeated rebel angels as distorted, ugly, and bestial. The reinvention of the icon of Satan required as well the growth of powerful oppositional movements in the 1780s and especially the 1790s. In 1777, Barry, still a follower of Burke, produced his The Fall of Satan, an etching and aquatint in which the traditional stereotypes are still intact: the heroic, larger-than-life figure of the archangel Michael towers over the hairy, uncouth figures of the fallen angels.
