The Figure of Satan in English Literature from Milton to Shelley.

Abstract

Satan, the ‘ruler of the powers of the air’ of Ephesians 2:2, is undoubtedly the tragic hero (in the sense employed by Aristotle in his Poetics) of Milton’s epic poem, Paradise Lost. Blake, Byron and Shelley saw him quite differently, perceiving the heroism, but transforming the tragedy, and, instead of seeing hubris (‘overweening pride’), Promethean defiance, of which they fully approved.