Byron and Shelley: Satan’s school

1. Byron and Shelley: Satan’s school The inspiration for the Byronic hero

2. Review • Characteristics of the Byronic hero • Moody • Passionate • Cruelty • Guilt from past crime (usually sexual in nature) • Isolated/alienated • Self-destructive • Arrogant • Intelligent • Cynical • Emotionally conflicted (bipolar disorder) • Heroically defiant • Humanistic opposer of tyranny • A symbol of struggle and hope

3. So. . . • Based on your understanding of Paradise Lost, which character best represent the Byronic hero? • Refusal of subjugation was seen as an heroic act in itself, and many Romantics consider Satan to be the hero of Milton’s epic.

4. William Blake accuses Milton of unknowingly belonging to the devil based on his presentation of Paradise Lost. Milton was concerned that his “inspiration” would be mistook for pride; Byron’s inspiration was both glorious and sinful, and his creation glorifies human aspiration What had happened was. . .

5. A new and exhilarating fascination • The Romantics were terribly concerned with the subject matter of Milton’s poem. They were also consumed with the myth of Prometheus. • Bryon writes a poem about Prometheus largely inspired by Percy Shelley’s poem “Prometheus Unbound” • Mary Shelley uses the Promethean figure for the subtitle of her novel. • The French Revolution, particularly the person of Napoleon, serves as an inspiration for the Byronic hero

7. Prometheus Rising • Romantics such as Byron and Shelley found Prometheus’s story to be their own. • They equated the Satan in Milton’s vision as a type of the Promethean figure. . .defiant, angry, and willing to take on God (or Zeus) • Percy Shelley wrote, of Prometheus, that he was a more “poetical” character than Satan, and, “as it were, the type of highest perfection of moral and intellectual nature.” • Still, Percy was very much intrigued by Milton’s Satan and declared him the hero of the story; the moral superior to Milton’s tyrannical God (though flawed by vengefulness and pride) • Note: Percy is frequently identified with Victor: “irresponsible, obsessive, and destructive”—”A Multiplicity of Marys”--Botting

8. A beautiful, tortured soul Born with a physical deformity of the foot; some speculated it was a “cloven” foot. Byron classified Satan as a hero, and modeled many of his characters after him He was equally fascinated with the story of Cain (a poem was inspired) Many critics believe the legends of which he wrote describe him equally well So, what about Lord Byron?

9. Satan’s School

10. “The Christians have turned this Serpent into their Devil, and accommodated the whole story into their new scheme of sin propitiation.”—Shelley, On the Devil, and the Devils • In removing the Devil from the story of man’s fall, Shelly and Byron remain consistent with actual text of Genesis, and suggests that man himself, not a demon, is to blame for his expulsion from the Garden of Eden. From “Representations of the Devil” Nineteenth-Century Literature Criticism; Vol 100.

11. Byron’s Cain • if he gives you good—so call him if/ Evil springs from him, do not name it mine./ Till ye know better its true fount; and judge/ Not by words, though of spirits, but the fruits/ Of your existence, such as it must be,/ One good gift has the fatal apple given--/ Your reason;--let it not be over-sway’d” --Lucifer speaking to Cain

12. What would Byron and Shelley think about man’s fall as the result of his own free will?

13. Byron: “There is little reason to suppose that any considerable multitude of planets were tenanted by beings capable of resisting the temptations of the Devil than ours. But is the Devil, like God, omnipresent? If so, he interpenetrates God, and they both exist together.” Byron’s Lucifer professes himself ready to struggle against Jehovah throughout the universe over which they BOTH reign

14. Shelley and Byron were infamous • The idea that God and the devil work in some sort of partnership, God creating man to be burned by the devil in hell-fire, is found in both Shelley’s essay On the Devil, and Devils, and Byron’s Vision of Judgment, as well as in Cain. • Their works reveal the desire to subvert and even poke fun at the orthodox Christian belief in the archfiend.

15. Still. . . • Neither poet was blinded by Satan’s heroic nature (in Milton’s poem) • Shelley wrote: Satan has the “taints of ambition, envy, revenge, and a desire for personal aggrandisement” (preface to Prometheus Unbound) • Byron’s Lucifer professes himself to be unable to love, and possesses many of the same flaws Shelley criticizes • BUT, in refusing to accept man’s blame for the fall, and arguing against the idea of an omnipotent and benevolent Jehovah, they express incredibly irreverent notions.

16. So what does this have to do with Frankenstein? • The novel comes to represent Mary’s view of the danger of the Romantic idealism her hero and Shelley’s (Satan, Prometheus, and perhaps himself) fall prey to—Botting. • If one considers Mary Shelley’s literary heritage (her feminist mother primarily), one cannot overlook that the inclusion of PL does offer something of a misogynistic view of women. • But Victor brings forth Death on his own, without the implication of female weaknesses and guile” • Notice how the women of the novel are relatively “Eve-like,” except for they do not contribute to Victor’s aspirations, and they are all relatively minor characters. • Thus, Shelley allows for a refutation of Milton’s affiliation of the feminine and the Fall.

17. A Closing Thought. . . • From “Frankenstein’s Fallen Angels” by Joyce Carol Oates • While Paradise Lost is to Frankenstein’s demon. . .the picture of an “omnipotent God warring with his creatures,” Frankenstein is the picture of a finite and flawed god at war with, and eventually overcome by, his creation. It is a parable of our time, an enduring prophecy, a remarkably acute diagnosis of the lethal nature of denial; denial of responsibility for one’s own actions, denial of shadow-self locked within consciousness. • “My form is a filthy type of yours.”