The Human Satan in Seventeenth-Century English Literature: From Milton to Rochester (review)

Nancy Rosenfeld's The Human Satan in Seventeenth-Century English Literature examines the evolution of a seventeenth-century Satan character as it changes from the product of the epic, a figure no longer archangelic but embodying the evil impulses of the human, to the reduced Satanic rake, a figure of humanity. Rosenfeld asks how the archetypal Satan character reflects each writer's response to the personal, political, and religious loss experienced at the restoration of the monarchy and of the Church of England. An intriguing thread in Rosenfeld's work is her inquiry into the extent to which a seventeenth-century Christian's search for redemption was a group-based versus an individual process and her exploration of a possible "correlation between evil and individuation wherein one perceives oneself as a discrete entity rather than as a member of a group" (1). Rosenfeld concludes her study by analyzing John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, as a "luminal figure" and as the author of poetic personae that incorporated the Satan character of John Milton and John Bunyan (2).

Rosenfeld analyses the way in which Milton's Satan character in Paradise Lost "grows into humanity as he grows into evil" (5). Rosenfeld elaborates in her first chapter on Satan's individuality, an individuality marked by pride and doubt, and she avers that Satan's individuality also "entertained confusion as to the power of the Deity who headed the cosmic hierarchy" causing his fall from heaven (13). Rosenfeld further finds that beyond Satan's pride and ambition is his "swinging back and forth between hope and despair" (14), a despair reflected in the general mood concerning the political and religious conflict of the seventeenth century. Rosenfeld establishes her thesis that the mood swings characterizing the archetypal Satan character represent the lack of control that prevents one from maintaining a moral position. Rosenfeld concludes her first chapter observing that Satan, by the end of Paradise Lost, has become a "human(ized) exile" (29).

Continuing her analysis of the Satan character as humanized, Rosenfeld discusses John Bunyan's Grace Abounding, different in genre from Paradise Lost but similar in purpose. In this chapter, Rosenfeld analyses Bunyan's Tempter to find that this Satan character represents a facet of the human mind, playing as he does the roles of creator, artist, poet, and actor in the seventeenth-century context of political information and disinformation. Rosenfeld contends that this Tempter, as he acts on the stage of the human mind as theater, has the ability to understand and manipulate that mind. Rosenfeld compares the outward form of Satan in Paradise Lost who can create visions as an artist and who disguises himself as different creatures to implant dreams and ideas in the mind of Eve with Bunyan's Tempter who "manipulates the thoughts, feeling, and dreams of another man" as a politician or artist would, which represents a Satan character who has become more human (52).

The ability to feel guilt but not to sustain that feeling, according to Rosenfeld in Chapter 3, characterizes the Satan of Paradise Lost and the Tempter of Grace Abounding; guilt also characterizes Mr. Badman, a Satan character who "is a way station on the road between the Tempter of Grace Abounding and Diabolus of The Holy War" (57). War She says that while Mr. Badman feels a limited deathbed guilt during his first serious illness, he does not sustain it; he is incapable of permanent repentance, a failing that also characterizes Diabolus. Rosenfeld reminds the reader that, for veterans of the English Civil War, salvation was an individual process rather than a group-based one, and, having established this premise, she posits that part of Satan's failure is his functioning as part of a group. Likewise, Bunyan's Diabolus holds a consultation with his closest mates. Both Satan characters manipulate listeners, according to Rosenfeld, and the wide range of emotions they feel tends further to humanize the character...