Duality in Milton's tragic hero-villain in 'Paradise lost' : a satan you can love and hate

Abstract

This dissertation seeks to analyse the dual nature of Satan in John Milton's Paradise Lost. The Introduction will first establish the standpoint of the dissertation, which views Satan as the tragic hero-villain of the epic, and it will then move to an analysis of an inherent duality evident in parts of the epic that involve features other than Satan's character. The first chapter will analyse theories of doubling from different disciplines: philosophy, ethics, and psychology, and will apply the theories to the poem using illustrations from different parts of Milton's epic. The first part of this chapter will focus on the Apollonian-Dionysian duality as proposed by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy, the second part will debate whether or not Satan and God's parts in the heavenly war could be justified using the Just War Theory, and the final part will analyse doubling in Freudian terms, referring to The Uncanny and The Ego and the Id. The second chapter is the core of the dissertation. It will analyse Satan's duality in three parts. The first part will analyse Satan's duality in terms of heroism; classical versus epic heroism, and whether he is more of a hero than a fool. It will then move to an application of Aristotle's Poetics, to justify the term 'tragic' given to him in the introduction. The second part will analyse other features of duality in Satan, namely, appearance and reality and the interior split within him. The final part is a close reading of 'Book IV', using this reading as an in-depth analysis of the character. This will lead to the conclusion, which uses all that has been said to determine why there may be a split in readers between love and hate for this character, thus answering the final part of the title posed by this dissertation.