During the era of Romanticism the figure of the Devil got a new meaning and an incredible importance. This was strongly true in France: the Devil was seen as an attractive symbol by romantics, allowing them to express their problems, their hidden tendencies and their ambitions. The romantic concepts of Satan is presented in three main topics:

The Beauty of the Devil

"Le Diable Amoreux", by Jacques Cazotte, told the story of Alvaro, a young boy that in Naples befriends a man claiming the ability to summon spirits and control them to do what he desired. The man leads Alvaro to a cave near Portici, and shows him how to invoke the Devil. After a lengthy ritual, a camel head appears and asks <<Che vuoi?>> (What do you want ? Italian). As a joke, Alvaro asks the camel head, which is a manifestation of the devil, for a piece of candy. But instead, Alvaro receives a servant girl that will eventually reveal herself as the Devil. In the meantime, she seduces Alvaro, and Alvaro doesn't realize that she is the Devil before it is too late. Cazotte is trying to portray the devil in a completely new and different way, contrary to medieval tradition. No more monstrous aspect and horns, Cazotte's Satan is a young, fascinating lady that Alvaro is compelled to love. Alfred de Vigny in Eloa also shows the appeal of evil:

Je suis celui qu'on aime et qu'on ne connait pas.
Sur l'homme j'ai fondè mon empire de flamme
Dans les désirs du coeur, dans les reves de l'ame,
Dans les liens du corps, attraits mysterieux,
Dans les trésors du sanf, dans les regards des yeux

I am the one who loves himself but doesn't know himself
I founded my empire of fire on mankind
In the wishes of the hearts, in the dreams of the soul,
In the minds of bodies, mysterious forces,
In the treasures of blood, in the secrets of eyes

But the greatest emphasis of the beauty and the attraction of the devil comes from Baudelaire; he affirms that the essence of beauty and the appeal of devil lies in the power and sadness and danger: "J'ai trouvè la définition du Beau - de mon Beau.".

The Poetry of Evil

The thing that made the devil a most important character of Romanticism was the tendency that developed in that period to celebrate the "not to be", the impossible, the absurd. This has been evident since Lord Byron revealed the new role of the devil: in "Cain", Lucifer teaches mankind to rebel against a tyranny that blocks happiness, just as he himself rebelled against God. Alfred de Vigny remarked upon the ideas of Byron in a great poem that had a blasphemous title: "Satan". The spirit of the Romantic authors was rebellious and therefore they identified themselves, even though they did not write about it directly, with the desperation of an incarnate soul, bound to a body. We find these feelings in Chute d'un Ange by Lamartine, in Nerval's sonnets, especially in Story of the Queen of Morning. In "La fin de Satan" by V. Hugo, the rebellion of Satan is the starting point of liberation of humanity from slavery. However Baudelaire shows the concept in the more suggestive way: O toi, le plus savant et le plus beu des Anges, Dieu trahi par le sort et privé de louanges, O Satan, prends pitié de ma longue misére! [...] Gloire et louange à toi, Satan, dans les hauteurs Du Ciel, où tu régnas, et dans les profondeurs De l'Enfer, où, vaincu, tu reves en silence! Fais que mon ame, un jour, sous l'Arbre de Science, Près de toi se repose, à l'heure où sur ton front Comme un Temple nouveau ses rameaux s'épandront! (Litanies de Satan)

Ultimately, evil characters like the Devil are rarely presented as models, yet they give off a sort of infernal poetry, created by their solitude, their power, and their courage to rebelling against God. Baudelaire retained that the task of a modern poet was to paint the actions that the devil forces us to do.

The End of the Devil

The idea of the end of Satan is linked to the previous theme and was written by many Romantics in two ways-one demonstrating that Satan was not as evil as the general populace thoughtand that he actually was the defender of the man, the other showing that the Devil eventually would regret his past life and sins and would eventually be forgiven by God. The first method was already implied in the figure created by Lord Byron: rebellion is legitimate, it is not evil, it is good. Byron's Satan is more justified than God. In "Consuelo" by George Sand, Satan appears as a wonderful creature, no more in a deceiving aspect (as in Cazotte): he shows his true beauty. Victor Hugo merges the two ideas in "La fin de Satan" a story that summarizes the concepts related to the evil that was already present in his previous works: the guilt of evil as a result of a misunderstanding and a cruelty suffered, and the opportunity of redemption, that through the Devil opens the door to reconciliation with God. "La fin de Satan" represents the culmination point of the myth of Satan in the 19th century. Satan was seen by Romantics as the figure of rebellion (Romanticism) against the imposing rules of an immutable society (Classicism), showing and seeking nevertheless a reconciliation between the two respective, contradictory models.