The Origins of satan in paradise lost

Abstract

ABSTRACT MUHAMMED NACAR JUNE 2003 THE ORIGINS OF SATAN IN PARADISE LOST This project aims to analyze the sources of Paradise Lost by Christopher Marlowe comparing The Old Testament, The New Testament, Greek Mythology and The Qur'an. Satan is the most dominant personality in Paradise Lost and in the opinion of many critics what remains most abidingly in our mind after reading Paradise Lost is this dominant personality of Satan. In the twentieth century a different view of Milton's portrayal of Satan has been taken on the contrary to the earlier critics. The modern scholars like C.S. Lewis think that the poet has not identified himself with satan and that in the epic satan shows a gradual decline. Milton's Satan is a very mew character that his contemporaries' wouldn't accept it. Milton doesn't draw an accustomed outline of Satan like in miracle plays or religious books. Milton's Satan is neither the Satan in The Old and New Testaments, nor Prometheus in Greek mythology nor Iblis in Qur'an completely. What Milton has done is to mix them all and recreate a new Satan that carries some features of all those different elements. As you see serpent as Satan you think he follows the Judea-Christian tradition. On the other hand when you see Satan as an excessive lover who doesn't want to share his love with anybody else and rebels with the permission of God, you know that Milton uses Qur'anic description of the story. Some critics realized Milton's Satan as a different one, however they didn't know that it was Qur'anic since they were unaware of it. That is why they thought mistakenly that Milton was influenced Prometheus and his rebel against Zeus in order to bring good to humanity. When deeply analyzed it is clear that Prometheus might have been a source but it was not as dominant as Qur'an. in