6.

Conclusion Can we give a straight answer to the question whether or not Satan is the hero of John Miltons Paradise Lost? In the previous chapters many arguments have been forwarded and analysed. In books I and II of the work Satan displays true heroic behaviour. He rebels against his suppressor, he bravely stands up for himself and the other fallen angels in his fight for freedom and he manages to gain leadership of Hell without many obstacles. However, Paradise Lost consists of ten more books, in which we slowly but gradually see the digression of Satans character and his circumstances. Satan begins to realise that he is not only condemned to Hell. He is also condemned to carry Hell within him everywhere he goes. In the end, the sins that Satan commits make him lose his heroic status and his heroic deeds are actually rooted in sin. Paradise Lost is an epic, which causes the reader to instinctively search for an epic hero. Milton gives his Satan heroic qualities and since he is such a dynamic and controversial character in the work, critics have been arguing whether or not Satan is a hero, ever since the work was published. Both sides have valid arguments to support their view. Satan indeed has many heroic qualities, but they are rooted in evil and sin and his heroic qualities deteriorate rapidly as the plot progresses. Therefore, it is difficult to answer the question of whether or not Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost with a simple yes or no. Critics supporting Satans heroic status focus their attention on the heroic traits that Satan unmistakably does posses. Anti-Satanists stress the fact that Satans speeches are pompous instead of heroic and that rebelling against God can never be heroic. Furthermore, one should look beyond Book I and II in order to get a full picture of Satans character. The arguments which support the claim of the Anti-Satanists that Satan is not the hero

of Paradise Lost seem quite convincing, but why is it possible that so many readers have seen and still see Satan as the hero of the work? In their arguments, many point at Satans heroic traits in books I and II and they almost seem to forget what happens to Satan in books III to XII. Especially in the Romantic period, the view of Satan grew more favourable and many regarded him as the hero of Paradise Lost. In literature, other literary characters very similar to him began to appear. To give some examples, Lord Byron has written some famous and very influential works with idealised but flawed characters, such as Don Juan or Childe Harold, who came to be referred to as Byronic heroes. Next to that, also influential authors like Charlotte Bront, James Fenimoore Cooper and Herman Melville started to write about characters that resembled Miltons Satan in many respects. The imaginative revolution of Romanticism gave rise to many changes in literary form and theme: one of the most obvious was the revival and interest in the hero.50 Many authors of the Romantic period modelled their characters to be heroic like Miltons Satan, but gave them an evil or dark side as well, just like Miltons Satan has. An important and influential critic of the Romantic period was William Blake. In his Marriage of Heaven and Hell, he states that sinning is good as it is dynamic. This, together with the new interest in literary heroes of the Romantics, provided a new perspective in reading Paradise Lost. If sinning is not per definition evil, then it is still possible to see Satan as the hero of the work, albeit not an epic hero. Anti-Satanists put forward the argument that Satan cannot be the hero, since his motives are impure and he is driven by jealousy and pride. However, from Blakes point of view these negative aspects have no relevance when discussing the heroic status of Satan. From a Romantic point of view a hero was allowed to

have a dark side. By the end of the eighteenth century, religious beliefs changed and belief in the devil among the higher and more literate classes had nearly disappeared. Yet Romantic authors and painters in England and on the Continent were fascinated with the myth of Satan. They developed Satan into an ideological symbol with a broad range of functions: expressing rebellious or unconventional political, moral and religious values51. The readers perception of Satan is changed by the period in which the epic is read. Milton may not have intended his Satan to be the hero of the work; his heroic status is indeed questionable in many respects. However, readers in the Romantic period were influenced by the period they lived in. In Romanticism, Miltons fallen angel became an ideological vehicle and a mythic stand-bearer for moral religious and political values52. The myth of Satan started to lose the important position it had before. The Bible does not contain many references to the devil and his fallen angels, nor the War in Heaven, and this opened up the opportunity to step away from the medieval idea of the devil as pure evil. Contrastingly, when Dante wrote his La Divina Commedia, the role of the devil was still very clearly defined. He was pure evil and Dante placed him in his Hell in the deepest pit. This is in conformity with the medieval world view, where order was very important. The romantic period made Satan into a sublime figure, who could be a hero regardless of the fact that he was the devil. Famous Romantic artists depicted Satan in an idealised and heroic manner in the early 1790s. Only a decade earlier Satan without exception had been depicted in a monstrous and at best in merely human form53 . These changes in the world view influenced Blake and his Marriage of Heaven and Hell, a work which contains the view that evil and sin are dynamic

and therefore do not necessarily have to be bad. He refers to Milton in his work and this, among with other Romantic influences, has changed the way people looked at Satan. Unlike before, it was less controversial to state that Satan is the hero of Paradise Lost. From the beginning of the eighteenth century, Satans sins became easier to forgive because of his sublimity, up to the point where he was no longer a villain, but a hero. So, if Satan is not an epic hero, could he perhaps be a Romantic hero? Romantic heroes have two characteristics which make them distinctive in the heroic tradition. The first characteristic is that feelings and emotions are very important to them.54 This is very apparent in Miltons Satan. He is very aware of his own feelings and desires and he even feels his own digression in some of his inner monologues. Next to that, he is also aware of the feeling of others: he sees the love of Adam and Eve and this affects him deeply, be it in a negative manner. However, it is typical for the Romantic hero that these feelings and emotions are for the greater part personal and even ego-centric: the Romantic hero is not socially concerned. Self-awareness is basic to the position assumed by the Romantic hero. He takes for granted the centrality of an active ego.55 This seems to be the case with Satan as well. He cares only about himself and his own personal glory. The second characteristic of the Romantic hero is his Satanism. Satanism in the Romantic period was rebellion in the name of individualism, humanism and self-reliance. In fact, many fictional characters were created with Miltons Satan in mind as a role model, which makes him almost the ultimate Romantic hero.56 However, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries critics such as C.S. Lewis, S. Musgrove and Charles Williams very much supported the Anti-Satanist view and the Romantic view of Satan was challenged by this different perception.

As we have seen in previous chapters, in some parts of Paradise Lost Satan seems heroic, while in other parts he seems ridiculous. When Milton wrote the work, some scholars already saw Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost, but this view was not widely accepted. However, as time passed, the perception of the readers of the work changed, and so did the opinion on Satan. Belief in the devil was waning and he became a character of superstition. It was during the Romantic period that Satan grew out to be the hero of the work. Readers admired him for his pursuit of liberty, individualism and determination, which became popular themes at the end of the eighteenth century. The fact that Milton did not write Paradise Lost during the Romantic period but well before that makes it difficult to call Satan a Romantic hero. The times in which Milton wrote his work were very different from the Romantic period. Romanticism caused people to read Paradise Lost from a different perspective, a perspective which highlighted Satans heroic side. The notion that heroes do not need to be perfect and that they could have flaws in their heroism became widely accepted. It was in this period that Satan became a true hero, even if Milton may not have had this intention when writing Paradise Lost. Satan may not be a Romantic Hero originally, but he became a hero in the eyes of the Romantics.