Articulating the Fall: Satan's Instrumental Rhetoric in Paradise Lost

Abstract

Milton’s Paradise Lost establishes itself as a song from its first invocation of the muse. Approaching the poem as a musical composition, this paper examines the acoustic properties of Satan’s rhetoric. Specifically, this paper examines Satan’s use of the rhetorical device known as antimetabole, which repeats words in an inverted pattern to create a new meaning. Satan’s contagious rhetoric transforms the setting into which he speaks. This acoustical reading argues that the physical properties of Satan’s articulations, when embodied, constitute a metatextual moral test for an oral reader by threatening to infect the space around the physical text. Considering the plague of 1666, understanding rhetoric through its physicality literalizes its “contagious” elements. This paper fuses early modern interpretations of disease with a contemporary, secular reading of Paradise Lost to suggest that the poem’s moral test remains vital in our current age, one also marked with crises of communicability and communication.