Criticism

   Brazil

   Latin America

   English Literature

   Postmodernism

   Postcolonialism

   Other Entries

Postmodernism

"Fit Audience Find, though few(er)": Seeing Milton in Contemporary Fiction and Film

David Boocker . Tennessee Technological University

In The Death of Satan, Andrew Delbanco argues that modern secular culture "is now in crisis because evil remains an inescapable experience for all of us, while we no longer have a symbolic language for describing it." Whereas for those living in centuries past "evil had a name, a face, and an explanation . . . called the Fall . . . personified in the devil, and . . . attributed to an original sin committed in Eden and imputed by God to all mankind," modern society, according to Delbanco, seems more inclined to explain the actions of Hitler or Stalin as the result of madness, the effect of which is to diminish their culpability for their atrocities.
The fact remains, however, that in a 1995 Newsweek poll (the same year Delbanco’s book was published), 66% of Americans and 85% of evangelical Protestants said they believe in the existence of the Devil, although only 31% said they believe the Devil is the source of evil. This last point is especially important, and no doubt helps, in part, to account for the kinds of difficulties contemporary writers have in representing evil. Still, contemporary literature and films are filled with stories that feature a devilish figure, often in the mold of Milton’s Satan, whose popularity as a source for representing evil is still strong. However, in many cases, it is clear that while the writers of these stories understand the power and appeal of Milton’s Satan as a literary representation of evil, they also understand that it is not likely that this Miltonic evil will be recognized by their audience.

In this paper I will look at three different types of popular "literature" that feature Miltonic evil: Andrew Niederman’s novel The Devil’s Advocate, which features the Devil in the form of a lawyer named John Milton; the Star Trek episode "Space Seed," which features Ricardo Montalban as Khan, a Satanic tyrant from Earth’s past; and "The Infernal Serpent," an Inspector Morse episode about an Oxford Master-Professor who has a hidden history of having sexual relations with young girls. In all three of these works, Milton and Paradise Lost are featured prominently to explain the actions of the wrongdoers, and in each case, at or near the story’s end, the writers overtly explain the Miltonic references. Why do the writers of these texts explain the Miltonic references? To answer this critical question, I will draw on Umberto Eco’s theory of the reader to show how contemporary works which employ Milton’s Satan can be read in two different ways: "a naive way and a critical way," both of which "are inscribed within the textual strategy." For the "naive reader," whose familiarity with Milton is likely to be limited, the explanation is absolutely necessary, even though it may add little to his/her understanding. For the "critical reader, " who brings knowledge of Milton and Paradise Lost to the text, allusions to Milton and his poem open up textual complexities, revealing the extent to which these texts have been embedded with Miltonic influence--an influence that shows how Milton’s text is still important to our understanding of the nature of evil.