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