Between Satan and Mephistopheles: Byron and the Devil

Abstract

This article discusses Byron's knowledge of Goethe's Faust and its influence on Manfred, Cain, Don Juan, and The Vision of Judgment. Byron's appreciation of Goethe's fundamentally ambivalent Mephistopheles transforms the 'Satanism' that his earlier writings derive from Paradise Lost. Mephisto's bathetic realism softens the absolute opposition between the alienated self and the otherness of things into a more functional, open, dialogic liaison. This has analogues in the history of the representation of the Devil, notably in Job. The argument both develops and modifies positions on Byron advanced by McGann.

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