m and an external incrustation. Recently they have been wondering whether it is not a part of the structural irony of the whole design.
Satan, Sin, and Death are now seen to be a parody of the Trinity of Heaven (Hughes 177).
But the text seems repeatedly against the view of Satan as anything except the hero/anti-hero of the poem, irrespective of the idea of an anti-trinitarian anti-divine structural assertion. To be sure, this is Hughes's answer to critics who hold Satan the hero of the poem, and his agreement with critics who see Milton's purpose as the unfolding of the vanquishing of Satan.
But there is a compelling body of work that identifies Satan with heroic (or as the twentieth century might have it, antiheroic) qualities. Just because Milton's object may be, ultimately, to ridicule Satan does not mean that Satan is not the core of action. The postmodern notion of the anti-hero as a valid assertion of heroism within the narrative structure is, a point to which we shall return. For the moment,
...