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The Devil, Protest, and the Age of Revolution
Södertörn University, School of Historical and Contemporary Studies, The Study of Religions.ORCID iD: 0000-0001-9264-0395
2025 (English)In: The Routledge History of the Devil in the Western Tradition / [ed] Richard Raiswell; Michelle D. Brock; David R. Winter, London: Routledge, 2025, p. 357-371Chapter in book (Other academic)
Abstract [en]

The chapter details how Milton’s ambivalent depiction of Satan in Paradise Lost set off an admiration for the figure as a revolutionary hero. Growing into full maturity with romantics like Blake, Byron, and, especially, Shelley, the literary tradition of celebrating Satan immediately became intertwined with broader republican and secularist projects. By undermining the conventional understanding of Christian myth through drastic counter-readings, the bible’s function as a pillar of the established order-both political and religious-could be challenged. A similar approach was adopted by central anarchist thinkers like Godwin, Proudhon, and Bakunin. Other socialists perpetuated this radical tactic. In Sweden, it was employed by several leading social democrats around the year 1900, but eventually scrapped by mainline socialists when they decided to aim for parliamentary support and reforms rather than revolution. However, the symbolism of Satan as a noble eternal rebel has more recently resurfaced among West-German terrorists in the 1970s and North American secularist activists in the 2010s. 

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
London: Routledge, 2025. p. 357-371
National Category
Religious Studies
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:sh:diva-57059DOI: 10.4324/9781003096603-19Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-105002879133ISBN: 9781003096603 (electronic)ISBN: 9780367561420 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:sh-57059DiVA, id: diva2:1956432
Available from: 2025-05-06 Created: 2025-05-06 Last updated: 2025-05-06Bibliographically approved

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Faxneld, Per

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CiteExportLink to record
Permanent link

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Cite
Citation style
  • apa
  • ieee
  • modern-language-association-8th-edition
  • vancouver
  • harvard-anglia-ruskin-university
  • apa-old-doi-prefix.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-harvard.csl
  • sodertorns-hogskola-oxford.csl
  • Other style
More styles
Language
  • de-DE
  • en-GB
  • en-US
  • fi-FI
  • nn-NO
  • nn-NB
  • sv-SE
  • Other locale
More languages
Output format
  • html
  • text
  • asciidoc
  • rtf