The devil is perhaps the single-most recurring character in Old English narrative literature, and yet his function in the highly symbolic narrative world of hagiography has never been systematically studied. Certain inconsistencies characteristically accompany the nebulous devil in early medieval narrative accounts - he is simultaneously bound in hell and yet roaming the earth; he is here identified as the chief of demons, and there taken as a collective term for the totality of demons; he is at one point a medical parasite and at another a psychological principle.

Satan Unbound...