ABSTRACT
‘Nothing can exceed the energy and magnificence of the character of [Milton’s] Satan’, wrote Shelley in The Defence of Poetry. 1 And he is surely the greatest example of demonic experience and identity: a Macbeth raised to cosmological significance. Satan gives us the demonic in pure form. And yet, he is an insinuating figure, one who reveals a deep and disturbing connection between the demonic and ordinary sexual experience, which increasingly shall be a theme of this book. 2
