For millennia, Satan has been a popular model for representing transgressive forces. In John Milton\u2019s <\/span>Paradise Lost<\/span><\/i>, Satan is a dynamic character\u2014at once visible and invisible, manifest and ephemeral, masculine and feminine. By analyzing competing Protestant and folkloric interpretations of the Devil\u2019s relationship to invisibility and visibility, interpreting the changing views of both gender roles and biological sex in the seventeenth century, and examining the relationship between demonology and gender, I establish that Milton\u2019s Satan is \u201cqueered\u201d through his subversion of socially enforced binaries. Throughout the text, Milton both plays off of and against contemporary satanic cultural motifs. Ultimately, his radical reinterpretation creates a Satan who exists as a transgressor against contemporary notions of gender and sexuality.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Satanic tropes and caricatures that have existed in England for centuries focus primarily on visibility and the grotesque, with later interpretations retaining Satan\u2019s deformity while freeing him from the restraints of corporality. Milton reinterprets these historical depictions to render his Satan as a transgressive, inherently gendered and sexualized force in <\/span>Paradise Lost. <\/span><\/i>The pre-Miltonic Satan of sixteenth century and medieval folklore existed as a chaotic bricolage of repressed and actualized social anxieties. In both artwork and literature, Satan possessed \u201cboth human and animal traits\u201d and had the ability to appear as either \u201ca young man or woman,\u201d thus manifesting in a naturally transgressive form that challenged the contemporary gender dichotomy and was further striking for its deviance from conventionally appealing standards of appearance (Oldridge 232). For example, Satan could \u201ctransform\u201d himself from an aesthetically acceptable form, such as that of a \u201chandsome man,\u201d into something grotesque, such as \u201ca hideous beast\u201d (Oldridge 243). It is the visible that distinguishes Satan as a force of evil, and more specifically an <\/span>embodied <\/span><\/i>visibility: alternately gendered, sexualized, humanized, and animalized, and sometimes all at once. Through these transformations, Satan is defined by his visibility and its consequential grotesqueness. By contrast, the Protestant Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century saw Satan radically reconceptualized as an invisible, disembodied force\u2014notions with which Milton would have also been familiar, and which freed his Satan from the restrictions of physical form (Oldridge 236). <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Within <\/span>Paradise Lost<\/span><\/i>, there is a distinctive tension between Satan\u2019s visible and invisible nature: as Milton phrases it, a tension between his linkage to the solid \u201cEarth\u201d and to the amorphous \u201cAir,\u201d a curiosity regarding physical form that plays off of the premodern idea of the Devil as being able to possess \u201cthe mind of the faithful through manifold appearance\u201d coupled with a power for endless machinations via formlessness (Milton 4.940; qtd. in Dendle 30). In Puritanical narratives discussing Satan\u2019s prowess for invisible machinations, Satan has moved beyond the restrictions of being \u201cbodied\u201d and into the realm of the invisible and omnipresent, in what may be deemed an antipodal, evil subversion of God\u2019s omnipotence (Oldridge 235). Yet, even when the Puritanical Satan works in the shadows, he is still inherently linked with the visible realm, projecting visions of himself as an \u201cagent of personal temptation\u201d to sin in every possible way\u2014including temptations into adultery (Oldridge 235). For the notion of Satan as \u201ctempter\u201d links him with the age-old idea of the \u201ctemptress.\u201d In the scene where Satan first tempts Eve in a dream, she has \u201cdream\u2019d\u201d his \u201cgentle voice,\u201d which is disembodied from Satan and in her mind associated with Adam (Milton 5.32, 5.37). When he does appear to her, he takes the form of an angel, \u201cOne shap\u2019d and wing\u2019d like one of those from Heav\u2019n \/ By us oft seen; his dewy locks distill\u2019d Ambrosia.\u201d (Milton 5.55). Yet, here he is not physically manifest, but \u201ca dream,\u201d mere ephemera existing between the physical and the imagined (Milton 5.57). Whether he chooses to take this form within Eve\u2019s mind or Eve conjures this image herself is left ambiguous.If it is his choice, it reveals Satan\u2019s longing for an alternate body that, in comparison to his present grotesque form as a damned \u201cLeviathan,\u201d is simultaneously more sexualized and more appealing for epitomizing a specific gender ideal (Milton 1.201). <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In incorporating both folkloric notions of a \u201cvisible\u201d Satan and newer, Protestant notions of an \u201cinvisible\u201d Satan, Milton creates a radical new characterization that both unites the two views and recombines them into something completely new. But even when Milton\u2019s Satan works through \u201cinvisible\u201d mechanisms, he is still inherently associated with visual descriptors. As Peter Dendle explains, ,medieval folklore and emerging Protestant ideologies created a paradox of the Devil as both embodied and disembodied: \u201cOn the one hand, Satan is personal, subject to spatiotemporal laws and thus confined to a single place at a given time; on the other, he is a spiritual entity of such inconceivable scope and power that he may be said to inhere in all sinners, and in all sins, throughout the world\u201d (Dendle 24). This is a paradox that Milton seemingly resolves by combining these two abilities in his characterization of Satan\u2014a reinterpretation of canon which is in and of itself a transgressive act.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Satan\u2019s inherent visibility renders him \u201cqueer,\u201d or \u201cothered,\u201d in juxtaposition with God, whose omnipresent invisibility defines him. God\u2019s creations celebrate \u201cth\u2019invisible \/ Glory of him,\u201d a divine being whose power resides in a lack of manifestation and an inability to be captured in words or images (Milton 1.369). By contrast, Milton\u2019s Satan exists not only exclusively within variations of imagery, but in an imagery already warped\u2014\u201ctransform[ed]\u201d by his Fall, and transforming still, across binaries (Milton 1.370). Not given the luxury of passive invisibility, he exists purely in \u201cImage\u201d: that of \u201ca Brute,\u201d monstrous, manipulative, deceptive, due to the permeability of that image and its relational gender and sexuality (Milton 1.371\u201372). Satan exists as a representation of the \u201cvisible\u201d while God is the true definition of invisibility\u2014a masculine force, certainly, but <\/span>neutrally <\/span><\/i>masculine, at once disembodied and innately nonsexual, despite his characterization as a force of creation. As Lorraine Daston argues in her essay \u201cThe Naturalized Female Intellect,\u201d the gendered notions of the \u201cfemale sex\u201d imply explicit visibility\u2014through inevitable sexualization, objectification, and the performative act of childbirth\u2014while maleness is associated with a certain flexible \u201cinvisibility,\u201d or \u201cneutral\u201d masculinity (219). As Rousseau once famously stated, every aspect of femininity\u2014but especially its visual aspects\u2014\u201creminds woman of her sex\u201d in the same way Satan\u2019s refusal to conform to a single gendered form reminds Satan of his otherness, or queerness (qtd. in Daston 218). Thus, Satan becomes simultaneously feminized and queered in his association with visibility, especially when measured against God\u2019s neutrally masculine invisibility. Satan <\/span>is <\/span><\/i>image. But for all the tension between Satan\u2019s invisible and visible natures, aspects of Satan\u2019s visibility contain a distinctive tension of their own\u2014that between his bestial and idealized forms. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When he is acting in the \u201cvisible\u201d realm, Satan often assumes a bestial appearance, which Milton implies is his natural form after his Fall from heaven; his bestial nature places him in a liminal space between sexuality and sexual dysfunction. With his first appearance in the text, he is known as \u201cth\u2019infernal Serpent,\u201d far from human and further still from his ideal, \u201ctranscendent\u201d form in heaven (Milton 1.34; Milton 1.86). He is now \u201cin bulk as huge \/ As whom the Fables name of monstrous size, \/ Titanian, or Earth-born, that warr\u2019d on Jove, Briareos or Typhon, whom the Den \/ by ancient Tarsus held, or that Sea-beast \/ Leviathan, which God of all his works \/ Created hugest,\u201d monstrous and existing outside of the animal kingdom that God will soon so carefully craft in heaven (Milton 1.196\u2013202) But even in his subhuman form, he is simultaneously associated with an exaggerated male sexuality: the description of \u201cHis Spear, to equal which the tallest Pine \/ Hewn on Norwegian hills, to be the Mast of some great Ammiral\u201d imbues him with male virility; yet at the same time, Satan\u2019s Fall from grace has damaged his sexuality, as his \u201cSpear\u201d\u2014a distinctively phallic symbol\u2014is now shrunken, flaccid, weak, \u201cbut a wand \/ He walkt with to support uneasy steps,\u201d and is in \u201cdrooping\u201d form, thus implying the Fall as a castration that in turn renders him impotent and androgynous, both via his weakened \u201cSpear\u201d and his current savage, sexually unappealing appearance (Milton 2.292\u201395, 2.328). Furthermore, it is while in this grotesque form that God uses Satan\u2019s appearance to hold him prisoner under heaven\u2019s patriarchal gaze. Satan speaks of how God and heaven \u201cTransfix us at the bottom of this Gulf,\u201d turning \u201ctransfix\u201d into a double entendre that implies it is the act of being looked at by God that keeps him and the other demons trapped in Hell (Milton 1.329). \u00a0Made too monstrous for heaven, Satan is trapped in Hell not only by his subhuman form, but also by the threat of God\u2019s omnipresent gaze observing his every move.<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Imbued with the power to shift his appearance at will, Satan sheds his bestial figure for a human form when he first enters the Garden of Eden, playing into the trope of the beautiful, evil tempter\u2014or temptress. Yet he refuses to conform to a single appearance, instead existing at an intersection between human, bestial, and divine form\u2014a transgressive act that threatens the careful set of binaries between male and female, animal and beast that God has heretofore established. We first see him in a partially animal state, \u201cSquat like a toad\u201d (Milton 4.800). Though it is ambiguous as to whether this implies his entire body has been transformed into that of a toad or he is merely in human form but crouching in a grotesque, inhuman position, either way the resulting visual is uncanny and monstrous. Yet, it is in this form that he is more explicitly sexualized than ever. \u201cBy his Devilish art,\u201d he creeps near Eve and reaches towards \u201cthe Organs of her Fancy,\u201d the latter an ambiguous phrase that implies both a nonconsensual entrance into Eve\u2019s mind and her genitals (Milton 4.801\u2013802). Here, Satan\u2019s violation of Eve\u2014one of God\u2019s two ideal prototypes for the human race\u2014challenges God\u2019s authority on two counts: one, Satan has managed to corrupt Eve, despite her ideally feminine, innately human status and his ambiguously gendered, shiftingly monstrous existence, and two, this corruption calls into question God\u2019s ability to enforce the (gendered, bestial) hierarchies that He has established. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In this same passage, Satan is both perpetrator and recipient of sexual violence, as the Angel Ithuriel brutalizes him in turn; however, it is Satan\u2019s surprising reaction to this act that once again highlights his opposition to societal norms, particularly regarding sexual relations. \u201cTouch\u2019d lightly\u201d by the angel\u2019s ambiguously phallic \u201cspear\u201d as an admonishing act for trespassing in the Garden, Satan is symbolically sodomized. Yet, even during an act that in other contexts would be perceived as a violation, Satan becomes immediately aroused, ignited with a violent \u201cspark\u201d such as occurs when one \u201clight[s] nitrous powder\u2026Smutty grain \/ with sudden blaze diffus\u2019d,\u201d explosive imagery which implies an orgasm of rage (Milton 4.819, 4.810\u201317). The \u201cSmutty\u201d grain is sullied in both the literal and sexual sense; the emotional blast is at once paroxysm and a fiery surge of pleasure. Though it may be tempting to read this passage as an association between homosexuality and personal evil, one must understand that seventeenth-century English people regarded homosexuality much differently from their twenty-first-century counterparts. At that time, society viewed sodomy as a personal failing to which men from a variety of backgrounds might succumb. Sodomy was considered an isolated instance of vice, purely physical in nature, rather than linked to an inherent \u201cflaw\u201d in nature or character; such views wouldn\u2019t emerge until a distinctive homosexual, or \u201cMolly,\u201d culture began in the early eighteenth century, well after the publication of <\/span>Paradise Lost <\/span><\/i>(Oldridge 307). However, the act of sodomy was still illegal during Milton\u2019s time, so any implication of Satan as desiring acts of sodomy would still have been repulsive to English society at large. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0When Satan enters the Garden a second time, it is through radical transformation that implies a different kind of disruptive sexuality rooted in performative gender expression. He adopts the form of a \u201cserpent\u201d\u2014an obvious phallic image meant to tempt Eve (Milton 9.529). Satan further associates himself with male sexuality when he moves from being a \u201cSerpent sleeping\u201d to one \u201cerect\u201d once he is aware of Eve\u2019s presence, thus both simulating and stimulating sexual arousal (Milton 9.162, 9.501). When he perceives Eve for the first time, he sees \u201cVirtue in her shape how lovely\u201d and \u201cpin\u2019d \/ His loss\u201d when he cannot corrupt her (Milton 4.847\u201348). Whereas earlier he envies angels\u2019 \u201cGodlike,\u201d masculine \u201cforms\u201d and bemoans the loss of his own \u201ctranscendent brightness,\u201d he now yearns for the feminine ideal while still flaunting his virility, transforming both his gender and sexual appeal as an exercise in power and as a form of devilish \u201ctrickery\u201d that mocks the strict gender binary that God has attempted to enforce in creating Adam and Eve (Milton 1.358, 1.86). Moreover, Satan not only desires Eve sexually; he also desires her very existence as his polar opposite: a creature of virtue and \u201cSanctitude,\u201d in whom \u201cthe image of [her] glorious maker shon,\u201d feminine in her physical \u201csoftness\u201d and personal \u201cGrace\u201d (Milton 4.292\u201398). This is something that he himself\u2014despite his transformative powers\u2014longs to become but finds he cannot, either from self-restraint or a newfound limit to his transformative powers that traps him in a monstrous, bestial body, so he can only appear as idealized or divinely gendered forms in others\u2019 dreams, but never in reality. Satan\u2019s striking visibility is used to emphasize his evil nature\u2014specifically, Milton\u2019s Satan exists through a form of visibility that is both intrinsically gendered and made grotesque because of his refusal to conform to any specific morphology. This cautions readers that either engaging in lascivious sexuality or exploring beyond assigned gender roles within God\u2019s carefully constructed gender binary would be socially and personally condemnable for its violation of God\u2019s design. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0The gender binary was of primary concern in seventeenth-century English culture, and Satan\u2019s refusal to conform to its strict mandates reveals emerging social discord. In the years leading up to <\/span>Paradise Lost<\/span><\/i>\u2019s publication, social and political forces intersected to create radical new notions of gender roles that solidified patriarchal oppression within English society, thus making Satan\u2019s ambiguous relationship with gender all the more transgressive. Even within the social sphere, which had thus far seen radical reinterpretations of gender roles, the notion of sex stubbornly persisted as monolithic. As McKeon argues, in seventeenth-century England, \u201cthere [was] only one sex, and sex [was] a sociological rather than an ontological category,\u201d and a more complex discourse on human sexuality wouldn\u2019t emerge until the eighteenth century (301). Contemporary belief held that a given individual could become more feminine or more masculine depending on how they acted, rendering gender a performative act and the threat of aberrant behavior severe. Thus, Satan\u2019s ability to transform across genders manifests the anxieties surrounding gender roles in Puritanical England. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0On an even deeper level, divisiveness over gender difference in seventeenth-century England may be linked back to \u201cinternal affect and external enterprise, between the private and the public spheres,\u201d which in turn relates back to the concepts of \u201cmaleness\u201d and \u201cfemaleness\u201d as a tension between the invisible and the visible, thus paralleling Satan\u2019s own struggle in conforming to these spheres throughout <\/span>Paradise Lost <\/span><\/i>(McKeon 307). Because of the belief in gender fluidity, there was an underlying societal anxiety that anyone\u2019s physical gender might shift at any given time; this process was reviled, a form of natural punishment for acting outside of gender norms, and thus something to be feared. These anxieties over gender performance and the threat of transformation are never more evident in <\/span>Paradise Lost <\/span><\/i>than when Milton\u2019s narrator describes the androgynous nature of spirits: <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0For Spirits when they please<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Can either Sex assume, or both; So soft<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And uncompounded is their Essence pure,<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Not ti\u2019d or mannacl\u2019d with joint or limb,<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Nor founded on the brittle strength of bones,<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Like cumbrous flesh; but in what shape they choose,<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Dilated or condens\u2019t, bright or obscure,<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Can execute their airy purposes,<\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0And works of love or enmity fulfill. (Milton 1.421\u2013430)<\/span><\/p>\n It is evident that \u201cSpirits\u201d\u2014including Satan\u2014are not restricted to exhibiting solely male or female characteristics. Unlike earthy, \u201ccumbrous\u201d humans (such as Adam and Eve), \u201cSpirits\u201d are not trapped within the primitive form of the gender binary that existed during the seventeenth century. They not only have the capability to \u201cassume\u201d the form of \u201ceither Sex,\u201d but also the ability to completely transform outside any gendered form, instead existing as \u201cpure\u201d \u201cEssence\u201d that cannot be defined in physical terms. Most significantly, \u201cSpirits\u201d are not only able to transcend physical and gender expression; they also possess the power to choose to do so, implying a sense of agency that no other of God\u2019s creations possess. Once more, however, this transformative ability is based on a heightened visibility. It is the spirits\u2019 forms, not their nature, that are transformed, as they can only be described through their visible presences\u2014as new forms \u201ccondens\u2019t, bright or obscure,\u201d defined by the <\/span>degree <\/span><\/i>to which they are perceivable rather than their ability to be or not be perceived\u2014and thus they never exist completely outside of perception. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0Finally, as Satan visibly transgresses the gender roles that God establishes, he defies societal expectations of patriarchal authority. While Satan\u2019s exact relationship to God is never made explicit, in heaven he \u201cdidst outshine \/ Myriads\u201d and was expelled for attempting to show he\u2019d \u201cequall\u2019d the most High,\u201d thereafter identifying himself as \u201cThe Adversary of God,\u201d a purely relational epithet that challenges God\u2019s omnipotence (Milton 1.86\u201387, 1.40, 2.629). In order to understand why this epithet is transgressive, one must consider seventeenth-century English society\u2019s hierarchical structure. Milton\u2019s time saw the rediscovery of Aristotle, and with it a new discourse on natural differences between men and women (Daston 213). Aristotelian philosophy emphasizes relational hierarchies, particularly within families wherein the male head of household\u2014\u201cthe father, the husband, and the master\u201d\u2014is the natural superior; this is not unlike God\u2019s assumed supremacy through His intertwined roles as \u201cFather\u201d of humanity and \u201cMonarch\u201d of heaven (McKeon 296; Milton 1.41\u201342). Satan, then, commits a transgressive act in subverting this hierarchy. He is deemed \u201crebellious\u201d against \u201cthe will of Heav\u2019n,\u201d and is punitively transformed into the monstrous leviathan we encounter in <\/span>Paradise Lost<\/span><\/i>\u2019s opening passages, his body made grotesque to visibly reflect his transgression, his physical appearance an aberration in the same way women\u2019s bodies were viewed as \u201caberrations\u201d of the male body within seventeenth-century biological hierarchy (Milton 1.71, 2.1025; McKeon 301). <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0In establishing himself as God\u2019s \u201cAdversary\u201d and natural antithesis, Satan appears to create a binary of his own; but upon further analysis, it is evident that in Satan\u2019s view he has not established a binary between \u201cgood\u201d and \u201cevil,\u201d but rather one between servitude and freedom. Through establishing Hell outside of Heaven and its tyrannical and \u201call-powerful king,\u201d despite the pain and suffering Satan endures for his transgression, he proclaims that \u201cHere at last \/ We shall be free\u201d\u2014free from the \u201ccommand[ing]\u201d force of God and the strict control (and strict binaries) He enforces on Earth and heaven alike (Milton 1.258\u2013260, 2.851). It is not God\u2019s benevolence that repels Satan, but rather His insistence upon hierarchies establishing Himself as the supreme master. Thus, patriarchal authority is the true fount of Satan\u2019s ire, and he is punished for defying it in the same way a woman or other person inferior to a male head-of-household would have been punished: through social exclusion. <\/span><\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/b>Milton\u2019s Satan exists at the intersection of a variety of transgressive historical and societal forces. The ambiguous nature of both his sexuality and his gender conflate him with the specific, omnipresent threat of \u201cnonconformity\u201d that haunted Protestant religious circles. In combining both folkloric and Protestant interpretations of satanic imagery, Milton presents a radical new version of Satan that both exists within and subverts established narratives on visibility, evil, sexuality and gender\u2014a Satan whose primary challenge to God\u2019s authority is his refusal to conform to the binaries that God establishes. Satan is image, image is sex, sex is power, and power is to be feared when in the possession of anyone outside of God and His patriarchal authority. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n Daston, Lorraine. \u201cThe Naturalized Female Intellect.\u201d <\/span>Science in Context<\/span><\/i>, vol. 5, no. 2, 1992, pp. 209\u2013235. <\/span>Cambridge.Org, <\/span><\/i>doi:10.1017\/S0269889700001162<\/span><\/a>. Accessed 27 Apr. 2016. <\/span><\/p>\n Dendle, Peter. <\/span>Satan Unbound: The Devil in Old English Narrative Literature. <\/span><\/i>University of Toronto Press, 2001. <\/span><\/p>\n McKeon, Michael. \u201cHistoricizing Patriarchy: The Emergence of Gender Difference in England, 1660\u20131760. <\/span>Eighteenth-Century Studies<\/span><\/i>, vol. 28, no. 3, Spring 1995, pp. 295\u2013322. Accessed 4 Apr. 2016. <\/span><\/p>\n Milton, John. <\/span>Paradise Lost<\/span><\/i>. Signet Classics, 1968. <\/span><\/p>\n Oldridge, Darren. \u201cProtestant Conceptions of the Devil in Early Stuart England.\u201d <\/span>History, <\/span><\/i>vol. 85, no. 278, April 2000, pp. 232\u2013246. Accessed 4 Apr. 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n PDF Version<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" By Jennifer Kaplan For millennia, Satan has been a popular model for representing transgressive forces. In John Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost, Satan is a dynamic character\u2014at once visible and invisible, manifest and ephemeral, masculine and feminine. By analyzing competing Protestant and folkloric interpretations of the Devil\u2019s relationship to invisibility and visibility, interpreting the changing views of … Continue reading Queering Satan: The Politics of Sex, Gender, Visibility, and Fear in Paradise Lost<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":1295,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[5,7],"tags":[57,45,40,46],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1291"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1344,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1291\/revisions\/1344"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1295"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emergencejournal.english.ucsb.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}