Abstrakt
St Juliana, virgin and martyr, the highlight of whose legend is her confrontation with and victory over a demon sent to tempt her, was a well-recognized saint in England since Anglo-Saxon times. Surprisingly missing in Aldhelm's collection De Virginitate, for which it would be admirably suited, her life was cast in a poetic form by Cynewulf and subsequently recorded in the Exeter Book, produced in (and for) a male Benedictine monastery.
This is the only extant Old English version of her legend. In the Middle English period, Juliana's life first appears in an alliterative prosaic version in the Katherine group, a text designed to provide instruction and inspiration for anchoresses.
The article confronts the two versions of the legend to examine how the context of implied audience and current literary modes (including dominant generic forms) shapes its telling, focusing especially on the portrayal of the antagonist(s) and the positioning of the narrative with regard to accepted secular values.