John Dryden refers to Satan as the hero of Paradise Lost in an essay written in 1697 (165). He is perhaps the first to refer to Satan as such. However, according to C.S. Lewis, "[W]hen Dryden said that Satan was Milton's "hero" he meant something quite different [than the traditional sense of the word]" (197). The 2001 Encarta Dictionary defines "hero" in several different ways: a "legendary man with superhuman powers," a "remarkably brave person," "somebody admired," and a "main character in fictional plot." Traditionally, a hero is somebody brave and admirable, as described in the second and third definitions listed. However, Lewis maintains that Dryden's use of the word "hero" more closely refers to the fourth definition, that Satan is merely a "main character in fictional plot." This use of the word refrains from a moral judgment. Satan is a main character in the poem. He is arguably the single most emphasized character. After all, paradise is lost because of Satan. The poem deals with the cause and nature of sin, which manifest themselves in Satan's character. Additionally, the word "hero" comes from the Greek heros, which includes an association with warriors ("Hero"). Satan is indeed a warrior, and thus the term "hero" fits him in that sense as well.

William Blake and Percy Bysshe Shelley take the concept of Satan as hero a bit further than Lewis' explanation of Dryden. Blake and Shelley are generally considered to be Satanists. The practice of Satanism is defined as an "inversion of religion that parodies conventional faith by venerating evil instead of good" (Miller). Blake, Shelley, and others of their kind do not merely admire Satan from a literary standpoint. They admire him from a moral standpoint as well. Blake writes, "The reason Milton wrote in fetters when he wrote of Angels and God, and at liberty when of Devils and Hell, is because he was a true Poet and of the Devil's party without knowing it" (353). This implies that being "of the Devil's party" is favorable, as it is the condition of a "true Poet." Blake does admit, however, that Milton did not consciously approve of Satan.

Shelley, on the other hand, writes, "Milton has so far violated the popular creed (if this shall be judged to be a violation) as to have alleged no superiority of moral virtue to god over his devil. And this bold neglect of a direct moral purpose is the most decisive proof of the supremacy of Milton's genius" (358). Shelley's statement clearly suggests intent on Milton's part in uplifting Satan. Going even further than equating the moral virtue of God and Satan, Shelley also asserts that "Milton's Devil as a moral being is … far superior to his God …" (358). He justifies this claim by reasoning that Satan "perseveres in some purpose which he has conceived to be excellent in spite of adversity and torture," whereas God, despite being "in the cold security of undoubted triumph[,] inflicts the most horrible revenge upon his enemy, not from any mistaken notion of inducing him to repent of a perseverance in enmity, but with the alleged design of exasperating him to deserve new torments" (358). Shelley takes a more literary approach to his interpretation. Discarding traditional preconceived notions about Satan's and God's moral virtue, Shelley views them merely as characters in the poem. He finds Satan's perseverance toward his goal to be more admirable than God's seemingly vengeful and despicable plan to orchestrate opportunities for Satan's further damnation. From this perspective, Satan does indeed seem to be "superior to his God" (358). However, the subtle and complex nature of Paradise Lost requires the reader to view it from more than one perspective.

C. S. Lewis acknowledges Satan as "a magnificent poetical achievement which engages the attention and excites the admiration of the reader" (196). However, he does not believe that the actual figure that Milton's character represents deserves any admiration or sympathy. Lewis acknowledges a literary admiration different from Shelley's literary admiration. Lewis merely admires the excellence in craft employed in Milton's portrayal of his character, whereas Shelley admires the actual character of Satan, and by extension Satan himself.

Lewis, in his 1942 essay "Satan," views Satan as the antagonist of the poem. He concedes that, at the beginning of the poem, Satan appears somewhat mighty and glorious, and his plight strongly appeals to the reader's sympathy. However, he stresses the degradation of Satan's character throughout the poem, both in his motives and in his physical appearance. Lewis writes:

He begins by fighting for 'liberty,' however misconceived; but almost at once sinks to fighting for 'Honour, Dominion, glorie, and renoune' (VI, 422). Defeated in this, he sinks to that great design which makes the main subject of the poem-the design of ruining two creatures who had never done him any harm, no longer in the serious hope of victory, but only to annoy the Enemy whom he cannot directly attack. (200-201)

In this perspective on the events in Paradise Lost, Lewis turns around Shelley's condemnation of God's moral motives. Lewis points out that, although Satan starts out fighting for liberty, his motives quickly degenerate to merely futile and vengeful attacks on an innocent third party. This seems an equal, if not more valid, attack on motives compared to Shelley's. "This progress, misunderstood, has given rise to the belief that Milton began by making Satan more glorious than he intended and then, too late, attempted to rectify the error," Lewis writes, probably referring to Tillyard's essay expressing that view (201; "Paradise Lost"). However, Satan's degradation is very deliberate, as Lewis points out.

Lewis also notes that Milton was "relying on two predispositions in the minds of his readers," namely, that "[m]en still believed that there really was such a person as Satan, and that he was a liar" (201). According to Lewis, Milton did not intend for Satan to be an admirable character, and that should have some weight in the interpretation. "It remains, of course, true," he admits, "that Satan is the best drawn of Milton's characters" (201). Lewis attributes this to human failings:

To make a character worse than oneself it is only necessary to release the imagination from control some of the bad passions which, in real life, are always straining at the leash…. But if you try to draw a character better than yourself, all you can do is to take the best moments you have had and to imagine them prolonged and more consistently embodied in action. (202)

This "release [of] the imagination" prompts Tillyard's claim that Milton made Satan more glorious than he intended. Tillyard proposes that Milton's imagination took over and focused on making Satan interesting rather than a character who embodies evil. However, seeing Satan's degradation demonstrated throughout the length of the poem, Lewis does not find Milton's portrayal of the devil to be overly glorious. To the Satanists, he adds, "The Satan in Milton enables him to draw the character well just as the Satan in us enables us to receive it" (202). Evil tendencies reside within all of us, and Milton's Satan is so vividly portrayed because we can relate to him.

E. M. W. Tillyard wrote two essays regarding the Satan of Paradise Lost: one in 1930, prior to Lewis' essay, and one afterward, in 1951. Tillyard makes arguments similar to Lewis', but he is more of a fence-sitter regarding definitive categorization of Satan's role in the epic poem. "The thorough-going Satanists will have to sacrifice both Milton's conscious intention and the structural unity to their belief," Tillyard writes ("Paradise Lost" 178). Thus he agrees with Lewis that Milton did not intend for Satan to be an admirable character, and that the structure of the poem refutes that view of Satan as well. However, he allows that "[s]uch a sacrifice might conceivably be necessary …" (178). Lewis, on the other hand, definitely finds error in sacrificing "both Milton's conscious intention and the structural unity," and cannot conceive of it being necessary. Tillyard is willing at least to give the Satanists' position consideration.

Despite Tillyard's fair consideration of the Satanists' position, he concludes, "There is one very important objection to all purely Satanic explanations. The grandeur of Satan is confined to the first half of the poem; if we risk the total significance on him, the second half contributes nothing to the whole …" (198). This is Tillyard's structural argument against the Satanists' position, which differs from Lewis' structural argument. Whereas Lewis stresses Satan's degradation throughout the poem, Tillyard emphasizes that he receives less and less attention as the poem progresses. In order for Satan to be a proper hero, the entire poem should be about him.

Tillyard greatly differs from Lewis in his belief that Milton "unwittingly … was led away by the creature of his own imagination" (198). In his later essay, Tillyard elaborates that Milton, caught up in "the heat of composition," may have given Satan "just a little more indulgence than he meant" (Studies in Milton 59). Here, Tillyard appears to be aligned with the Satanists, particularly with Blake's statement that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it" (353). Both perceive Satan as portrayed in a positive light, although Milton did not consciously intend it. The slight difference between Tillyard's and Blake's positions, however, is that Blake attributes Milton's positive portrayal of Satan to a subconscious admiration of him, whereas Tillyard merely attributes it to unchecked creativity. Overall, Tillyard tries to reconcile all perspectives on Paradise Lost with possible explanations, avoiding any firm stance where authority cannot back him up.

Elmer Edgar Stoll wrote on Paradise Lost in 1933, shortly after Tillyard's first essay. Stoll, like Lewis, emphasizes Satan's degradation throughout the poem. He is willing to give Satan a little more credit than Lewis allows. Stoll admires Satan at the beginning of Paradise Lost, describing him as "an archangel newly overthrown, his form having not yet lost all her original brightness, matchless but with the Almighty" (214). Thus, to Stoll, Satan has redeeming qualities at the beginning of the poem that evoke the reader's sympathy. As the poem progresses, however, "[H]e falls more and more a prey to envy and hatred, jeers and sneers instead of a breathing defiance and melancholy, and stoops to flattery and deceit" (214). This statement implies that Satan initially had honorable intentions and did not use ignoble means such as deceit. Stoll almost agrees with the Satanists at first, though he increasingly loses sympathy and respect for Satan as the poem progresses. He perceives Satan as the antagonist for the same reason that Lewis argues: Milton intends to dispel the reader's sympathy for Satan by showing his increasing degradation (214).

More recently, Northrop Frye attempted to reconcile the Satanist perspective with the more widely accepted view of Satan as an antagonist. He attributes readers' perceptions of Satan to their mental states. In a 1965 essay Frye writes:

Most of us live our lives on a roughly human level, but if we meet with some setback, snub, imposed authority or other humiliation we are thrown back on something that will support and console us, and unless we are saints that something is likely to be the ego. The somber, brooding, humourless ego, with its 'high disdain from sense of injured merit' drives us to look for compensation, perhaps by identifying ourselves with some irresistible hero. If in this state we read Milton, we shall find his Satan, so far from being the author of evil, a congenial and sympathetic figure. If we later regain a better sense of proportion, we may understand something of the profundity and accuracy of Milton's conception of evil. (524)

Thus Frye attributes the Satanists' position to a compensation for their own inadequacies. They are eager to find a hero to whom they can relate, and Satan is an obvious candidate. In their compromised position they are taken in by Satan's deception and do not see him as "the author of evil." Those who see Satan as the antagonist of Paradise Lost have "a better sense of proportion," enabling them to understand the "profundity and accuracy" of Milton's portrayal of Satan's evil.

Frye argues that Satan cannot assume the role of the traditional hero because "Paradise Lost is a profoundly anti-romantic and anti-heroic poem" (254). He makes this assertion because "conventional heroism, as we have it in Classical and medieval and Renaissance romance, is associated with the demonic in Milton means" (524). Milton always refers to classical mythology as baser than the true God and equates pagan gods with Satan's followers. Joseph Addison subscribes to this view as well. In his Spectator papers of 1712, he writes, "The Paradise Lost is an epic, or a narrative poem, and he that looks for an hero in it, searches for that which Milton never intended; but if he will needs fix the name of an hero upon any person in it, it is certainly the Messiah who is the hero, both in the principal action, and in the chief episodes" (49). Not only does Addison claim that there is no hero in Paradise Lost, he also asserts that, even if there were, it would be the Messiah, not Satan. Addison agrees that the poem is anti-heroic, supposing that it has a loftier ambition. "Paganism," he writes, "could not furnish out a real action for a fable greater than that of the Iliad or Aeneid, and therefore an heathen could not form a higher notion of a poem than one of that kind which they call an heroic" (49). Addison claims that a higher purpose exists for the epic poem than can be fulfilled in the classical heroic form. He does not attempt to elevate Paradise Lost above the Iliad and Aeneid, but as it is Christian and anti-heroic, he allows for the possibility of it being a greater accomplishment.

It can thus be seen how critics have differed in their interpretations of Paradise Lost. Most agree that Satan is the antagonist, excepting the Satanists who are predisposed to admire him. Differences in interpretation lie chiefly in Milton's intentions, the degree to which he was conscious of his creation, and the different focuses from one critic to the next. Most of the critics, including William Blake the Satanist, agree that Milton did not consciously intend to make Satan an admirable character. Some, however-Tillyard and Blake, for example-claim that Milton did in fact create an admirable character in Satan, though unintentionally. Others, including Lewis and Stoll, argue that Milton did not inadvertently portray Satan as admirable. They emphasize the degradation in Satan's character throughout the poem, finding that sufficient reason to dispel the initial sympathy and admiration the reader has for Satan. Perhaps Northrop Frye best explains the differences in interpretation regarding Milton's Satan. Each reader is affected by his own perception and mental condition. Those who admire Satan are of a different mental state than those who recognize his deceptiveness. Both interpretations may be valid for their respective mental states. To reiterate the words of Lewis, "The Satan in Milton enables him to draw the character well just as the Satan in us enables us to receive it" (202).

WORKS CITED

Addison, Joseph. "Six Spectator Papers on Paradise Lost." Milton Criticism: Selections from Four Centuries. Ed. James Thorpe. New York: Rinehart, 1950.

Blake, William. The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. Milton Criticism: Selections from Four Centuries. Ed. James Thorpe. New York: Rinehart, 1950.

Dryden, John. "Dedication of the Æneis." Essays of John Dryden. Ed. W. P. Ker. Vol. I. Oxford, Clarendon, 1926.

Frye, Northrop. "The Story of All Things." Paradise Lost. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: Norton, 1993.

Lewis, C. S. "Satan." Milton: Modern Essays in Criticism. Ed. Arthur E. Barker. New York: Oxford, 1965.

Miller, Timothy. "Satanism." Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia Deluxe 2001. CD-ROM.

Shelley, Percy Bysshe. A Defense of Poetry. Milton Criticism: Selections from Four Centuries. Ed. James Thorpe. New York: Rinehart, 1950.

Stoll, Elmer Edgar. "From the Superhuman to the Human in Paradise Lost." Milton Criticism: Selections from Four Centuries. Ed. James Thorpe. New York: Rinehart, 1950.

Tillyard, E. M. W. "Paradise Lost: Conscious and Unconscious Meanings." Milton Criticism: Selections from Four Centuries. Ed. James Thorpe. New York: Rinehart, 1950.

- - - . Studies in Milton. London: Chatto, 1951.

WORKS CONSULTED

Fish, Stanley Eugene. "Discovery as Form in Paradise Lost." Paradise Lost. Ed. Scott Elledge. New York: Norton, 1993.

Grist, Tony. The Bible of Hell. Review. New Hope International Review On-line. 16 July 2001. 19 November 2001. < http://www.nhi.clara.net/ba0071.htm>.

Hecimovich, Gregg A. Learning from Satan: the Heroic Fool and the Grace of God's Love. Eastern Illinois University. 29 November 2001. <http://www.eiu.edu/~multilit/english2205-fall99/paradise_lost/miltonlecture.html>.

"Hero." Def. Microsoft Encarta World English Dictionary 2001. CD-ROM.

Kermode, Frank, ed. The Living Milton. London: Routledge, 1962.

Reesing, John. Milton's Poetic Art. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1968.

Schreck, Nikolas. Flowers from Hell: Introduction. Creation Books, 2001. 29 November 2001. < http://www.creationbooks.com/text-flowers.html>.

Schultz, Howard. Milton and Forbidden Knowledge. New York: MLA, 1955.

Sewell, Arthur. A Study in Milton's Christian Doctrine. London: Oxford UP, 1939.

"What Is Satanism?" Lucifer's Realm: Satanism Main Page. 29 November 2001.
<http://home.bip.net/d.scot/Satanism/Satmain.htm>.

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This page updated February 4, 2003