Satan, whose name means "enemy" or "adversary" in Hebrew, is the first character to whom the reader is introduced, and the most complex. The leader of the fallen angels, Satan was known as "Lucifer" (Latin, "hghtbearer") before he initiated a rebellion against God and was cast out of Heaven. It has been suggested that Satan is the true "epic hero" of the piece, largely because of his epic language and heroic energy. However, as Robert M. Adams and George M. Logan point out in their introduction to the poem in The Norton Anthology of English Literature, it is ' 'energy in a bad...
Source: Epics for Students, ©2013 Gale Cengage. All Rights Reserved. Full copyright.
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