Which depiction of Satan do you prefer, Dante's or Milton's?

Which depiction of Satan do you prefer, Dante's or Milton's?

Obviously Dante's is much less heretical than Milton's, but from a literary perspective which works better?

Mephistopheles is better

>Dante
>less heretical

Infinite Jest's version was better.

Dante's Satan is an immobilized giant body that does nothing but cry and chew three people in a few cantos. He isn't a character at all. Milton's is a full-fledged protagonist. How can you compare them?

But Dante's vision is way better than Milton's. Milton took on a problem he couldn't really handle. Dante's satan is, in many ways, self-deception, so that he doesn't really have to be a character. It's the source of everything else you see in hell and purgatory.

Anyone seriously considering Milton is as good as Dante needs to stop memeing.

idk david foster wallace seems like a pretty nice guy

Milton's.

Milton's is far superior, sorry. Dante's is interesting, but as you say, he's a source, not a character, and the Comedy would be basically the same if he never appeared.

In Milton's time, his depiction of satan wasn't actually that heretical. Many of the traits we see as positive today would have been perceived as negative at the time

This tbqh.
Good 'ol Scratch > Promethean Hero > Shackled Titan.

Which one

Nagai's

Best Faust translation in English?

Stop memeing. Dante's universe is way deeper than Milton's satan.

Everyone from Beckett to Pound knows it's no contest. Dante is the only poet.

>there are people on Veeky Forums RIGHT NOW who think Satan is the hero or protagonist of Paradise Lost

Blake did, but knew it was accidental.
Author intention doesn't always translate very well, causing people to hate what are meant to be sympathetic characters and root for what the author intended as despicable villains.

Why is Dante the only poet?

Marlowe

dante invented poetry, similar to how shakespeare invented the human

the autism has reached new levels

you make papa bloom sad user. go stand in the corner and think about what you did.

In the case of Paradise Lost, that's be ause of the Romantics. I do not think that it was accidental. Milton knew very well what he was doing with the character of Satan. If people thibk Satan was a heroic figure it's because they lack knowledge of the context in which the poem was written, and also of Milton's politics.

>Dante's universe
Even if that's the case (it's not) the issue is the character of Satan. Dante's Satan is a side-show, he's not a character at all. This might be interesting (it is) but it pales to the universal depth* of Milton's Satan.

* ;)

I'd argue that Blake was right but go further: Satan is a heroic figure, and Milton absolutely intended him to appear so. But what Blake and the Romantics missed was that this was precisely the point: heroes are anathema to the Christian project, the stuff of pagan error. He wants to move beyond the worship of the individual, which necessarily gives rise to autocracy, and into the obedient priesthood of the believers.

I doubt he really believes that. It's bait, perhaps to spark discussion from controversy.