Subtlety as Evil and Milton's Enemies

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to analyze nature of subtlety in John Milton's attack of prelates in his antiprelatical prose and in character of Satan in Paradise Lost . In antiprelatical tracts, Milton severely criticizes prelates as demons or serpents that eschew clear, plain and most simple Truth. And in Paradise Lost , Milton portrays Satan as subtlest fiend, full of vagueness, crookedness and ambiguity, as involved in rising mist. The prelate, by which Milton means especially a bishop of Church of England, is a subtle Janus (a person is one cleverly uses indirect methods to achieve something). He is an eternal disturbance of simple truth who disguises himself as truth and emphasizes indirect way to attain truth. He transforms plainest and easiest truth into abstruse canons and insists on necessity of interpreter for truth. Similarly serpent, which Satan chooses for his disguise in temptation of Eve, is appropriately called the subtlest beast of all field, almost as an epithet, for Satan's task is to make most obvious truth ambiguous and elusive by subtlest means possible, thereby ensuring his success in corrupting Man. Satan's close affinity to corrupt prelates in antiprelatical tracts makes it difficult to view him as a tragic or an epic hero. The ambiguity whether Satan is a hero or only a perversion of it is another obvious evidence of Satan's subtlety against absolutely clear Truth.