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The Satanic Epic
The Satan of Paradise Lost has fascinated generations of readers. This book attempts to explain how and why Milton's Satan is so seductive. It reasserts the importance of Satan against those who would minimize the poem's sympathy for the devil and thereby make Milton orthodox.
Neil Forsyth argues that William Blake got it right when he called Milton a true poet because he was "of the Devils party" even though he set out "to justify the ways of God to men." In seeking to learn why Satan is so alluring, Forsyth ranges over diverse topics--from the origins of evil and the relevance of witchcraft to the status of the poetic narrator, the epic tradition, the nature of love between the sexes, and seventeenth-century astronomy. He considers each of these as Milton introduces as Satanic subjects.
Satan emerges as the main challenge to Christian belief. It is Satan who questions and wonders and denounces. He is the great doubter who gives voice to many of the arguments that Christianity has provoked from within and without. And by rooting his Satanic reading of Paradise Lost in Biblical and other sources, Forsyth retrieves not only an attractive and heroic Satan but a Milton whose heretical energies are embodied in a Satanic character with a life of his own.
Neil Forsyth argues that William Blake got it right when he called Milton a true poet because he was "of the Devils party" even though he set out "to justify the ways of God to men." In seeking to learn why Satan is so alluring, Forsyth ranges over diverse topics--from the origins of evil and the relevance of witchcraft to the status of the poetic narrator, the epic tradition, the nature of love between the sexes, and seventeenth-century astronomy. He considers each of these as Milton introduces as Satanic subjects.
Satan emerges as the main challenge to Christian belief. It is Satan who questions and wonders and denounces. He is the great doubter who gives voice to many of the arguments that Christianity has provoked from within and without. And by rooting his Satanic reading of Paradise Lost in Biblical and other sources, Forsyth retrieves not only an attractive and heroic Satan but a Milton whose heretical energies are embodied in a Satanic character with a life of his own.
382 pages, Paperback
First published December 9, 2002
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 18, 2026
**The Satanic Epic**
Forsyth traces the adversary figure from the ancient Near East through Job through intertestamental literature through Paradise Lost and the through-line is more coherent than you'd expect — Satan not as a Christian invention but as a figure with genuine mythological prehistory, the adversary function existing in various forms across the ancient world before Milton gave it the definitive literary shape that everyone now thinks of as the original. The Gnostic connection is obvious once Forsyth makes it, the Demiurge and Satan occupying structurally similar positions in their respective cosmologies, both figures of rebellion against or within divine order, both more interesting than the deity they're defined against.
The Paradise Lost readings are where it gets genuinely good, Forsyth taking Satan's speeches seriously as cosmological argument rather than reading them as Milton ironically undermining his own villain. The Satan who says better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven isn't being satirized — or at least not only being satirized — he's articulating something about autonomy and cosmic order that the epic tradition has always found compelling enough to keep returning to. Blake read it this way. Shelley read it this way. Forsyth gives the scholarly foundation for why that reading is defensible rather than just romantically appealing.
Sits naturally next to the Secret Book of John — Yaldabaoth and Satan both figures who refuse subordination to a higher order they didn't choose, both more philosophically interesting than their respective orthodoxies wanted them to be.
3/5 — scholarly groundwork that earns its place without quite reaching the cosmological weight the subject could sustain. The primary texts remain more alive than the scholarship about them, which is probably always true.
Forsyth traces the adversary figure from the ancient Near East through Job through intertestamental literature through Paradise Lost and the through-line is more coherent than you'd expect — Satan not as a Christian invention but as a figure with genuine mythological prehistory, the adversary function existing in various forms across the ancient world before Milton gave it the definitive literary shape that everyone now thinks of as the original. The Gnostic connection is obvious once Forsyth makes it, the Demiurge and Satan occupying structurally similar positions in their respective cosmologies, both figures of rebellion against or within divine order, both more interesting than the deity they're defined against.
The Paradise Lost readings are where it gets genuinely good, Forsyth taking Satan's speeches seriously as cosmological argument rather than reading them as Milton ironically undermining his own villain. The Satan who says better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven isn't being satirized — or at least not only being satirized — he's articulating something about autonomy and cosmic order that the epic tradition has always found compelling enough to keep returning to. Blake read it this way. Shelley read it this way. Forsyth gives the scholarly foundation for why that reading is defensible rather than just romantically appealing.
Sits naturally next to the Secret Book of John — Yaldabaoth and Satan both figures who refuse subordination to a higher order they didn't choose, both more philosophically interesting than their respective orthodoxies wanted them to be.
3/5 — scholarly groundwork that earns its place without quite reaching the cosmological weight the subject could sustain. The primary texts remain more alive than the scholarship about them, which is probably always true.
Displaying 1 of 1 review