English Literature / Unit 9 ENL 0813 short lesson, about 20 seconds
Satan's Readers: The Romantic Reading and Its Critics
Captions available
The idea
Romantic critics, among them Blake, Byron, Shelley and Hazlitt, read Satan as the poem's hero; Blake wrote that Milton was "of the Devil's party without knowing it." Christian critics such as C. S. Lewis and Charles Williams argued against reading Satan as heroic.
In practice
Hero or villain: two critical camps.
Where people slip
Attribute each reading to its critics.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
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