Tracing the literary development of the satanic form into a humanized form, Nancy Rosenfeld looks anew at well known texts by four seventeenth-century English writers-John Milton, John Bunyan, George Etherege and John Wilmot (Earl of Rochester). Rosenfeld focuses on the works from each author in which a satanic character features prominently, to show how these writers, taken collectively, have imbued Satan with the characteristics that define the human.