Vondel’s English Lucifer and Milton’s Dutch Satan

The anonymous pamphlet, Lucifer Faln, or, Some Reflections on the Present Estate of the Low- Countries (1672) from which these verses are taken, is bombastic doggerel of the kind common in times of conflict and rivalry. It neatly captures the popular myths that characterized Anglo- Dutch tensions in the seventeenth century, stoked by anxieties about each other’s growing trading empires and debates around politics and religion. Linking the opposing party to satanic origins or nature was commonplace, though not for that any less effective. Satan has been an easy short- hand for characterizing the enemy in many periods of history, since he comes loaded with readily available symbols and traits, and would be recognised by all parties as evil personified. \nThis article develops a brief account of the use of satanic and demonological images in Anglo- Dutch relations of the seventeenth century, using transnational and imagological frameworks. Transnationalism is a research agenda of many strands, emphasizing structures and materials that cross or complicate national borders. As I employ it here, this includes awareness of the developing contexts of cultural production at a variety of scales and levels, an insistence on the value of original-language readings, and recognizing the role of supra-national networks and events, including trade, war and diplomacy, in shaping intellectual and artistic activities. I also introduce a complementary method— imagology— which in another way, since this discipline also ‘crosses’ borders, uses stereotypes and ethnotypes to understand the cultural walls that societies build between each other, and how they are patrolled

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