| dc.description.abstract | Satan as a literary character is one of the most recurring characters throughout literature. The aim of this thesis is to explore a small fragment of the stories Satan has been a part of, and investigate the satanic impact on the characters that encounters and befriends the devil, in two literary works from the Romantic period. This pursuit will be conducted through an investigation of Satanic relations between the protagonists and Satan as represented in Charlotte Dacre’s Zofloya, or The Moor and Matthew Lewis’s The Monk.
The Romantic period is significant in the history of Satan as a literary character, as a group of British artists and writers started to, think and create works about Satan, in a different manner than the writers that came before them. The fictional character Satan was no longer regarded as an arrogate driven by lust without means, but a sort of disturbed hero, that readers could sympathise with. As this thesis will argue, in Dacre’s – and Lewis’s works where we encounter Satan, romance is significant in the making of a Satanic character that is possible to be sympathetic towards, in these literary works Satan gains his sympathy by being portrayed as a victim of unrequited love. Dacre’s and Lewis’s works are particularly interesting in this instance since one is traditionally understood as being influenced by the other, even though the progression of the narrative and the end for the narrators have similarities, there are difference in their approach to the character of Satan when we consider the differences in the two ambiguous characters. Both authors are commonly regarded as conservatives of their time; as I will argue, and their approach in creation of these two at the time radical literary, and their commentary to gender, race and indulgence is ambiguous. | |
