Read e-book online The Human Satan in Seventeenth-Century English Literature: PDF

Framed by way of an knowing that the very idea of what defines the human is frequently prompted by means of Renaissance and early smooth texts, this ebook establishes the start of the literary improvement of the satanic shape right into a humanized shape within the 17th century. This improvement is headquartered on characters and poetry of 4 seventeenth-century writers: the devil personality in John Milton's Paradise misplaced and Paradise Regained, the Tempter in John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the executive of Sinners and Diabolus in Bunyan's The Holy warfare, the poetry of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, and Dorimant in George Etherege's guy of Mode. The preliminary knowing of this improvement is thru a sequential studying of Milton and Bunyan which examines the devil personality as an archetype-in-the-making, development upon every one to paintings in order that the nature metamorphoses from a groveling serpent and fallen archangel to a humanized shape embodying the human impulses essential to dedicate evil. Rosenfeld then argues that this improvement maintains in recovery literature, displaying that either Rochester and Etherege construct upon their literary predecessors to enhance the satanic determine in the direction of larger humanity. eventually she demonstrates that those writers, taken jointly, have imbued devil with the features that outline the human. This e-book comprises as an epilogue a dialogue of Samson in Milton's Samson Agonistes as a later seventeenth-century avatar of the humanized satanic shape, delivering an instance for realizing a inventory literary personality within the gentle of early smooth texts.