Satan’s Power of Mind in John Milton’s paradise Lost: A Psychoanalytic Reading

John Milton in his great epic poem, Paradise Lost (1667), presents Satan with his angels fallen into hell, ina place of utter darkness, and also Milton emphasizes the shock experienced by Satan and his peers after falling. Afterthe trauma of fall, Satan decides to resist against the God who inclined to dictatorial pronouncements, war, anddestruction. Eventually, Satan becomes empower and through power of mind accepts the truth. In this respect, NicolasAbraham and Maria Torok, two prominent psychoanalytic theorists, define the traumatic potential through its effectsin the subject. Moreover, their writings specifically concern with the nature of the link between a subject’s inner andouter worlds. They believe that introjection is a healthy process that does not tend toward compensation. It is continualprocess of self fashioning through the work of mourning, gradual acceptance of loss and the fructification of change.Therefore, Concerning Satan’s encounter with trauma of fall in Paradise Lost, this study is intended to examine theway that Milton’s Satan through Abraham and Torok’s concept of introjection deals with trauma.

Keywords:

John Milton , Paradise Lost , Psychoanalysis , Introjection , trauma , Satan