Framed by an understanding that the very concept of what defines the human is often influenced by Renaissance and early modern texts, this book establishes the beginning of the literary development of the satanic form into a humanized form in the seventeenth century. This development is centered on characters and poetry of four seventeenth-century writers: the Satan character in John Milton's Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained, the Tempter in John Bunyan's Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners and Diabolus in Bunyan's The Holy War, the poetry of John Wilmot, earl of Rochester, and Dorimant...