Werewolf Literature

Although it borrows its title from Rod Daniel’s 1985 film, Jeff Davis' supernatural series Teen Wolf (2011-) is a different beast altogether: beneath the familiar tropes and aesthetic of teenage drama, in Davis’ Teen Wolf there lies a serious reflection on human-animal relations, which brings into focus both our fascination with and resistance to the wolf within. Drawing on animal studies, this paper argues that while the 1985 film is largely anthropocentric, the MTV series anthropomorphizes wolves to a lesser degree and reinforces the human-wolf connection; due to the privileging of the human, the freedom of will prevails in the former, while the latter assumes a philosophical determinism and biologism. As such, the two versions of Teen Wolf also correspond to, and can help us think more deeply about, two different perspectives on anthropomorphism in recent animal studies debates.

The subject of the study is the transformation of humans into wolves in medieval chivalric romances, rhymed tales (lais), educational works, Norse sagas, Russian literature and Serbian folk songs. The medieval idea of a werewolf was anatomically an ordinary wolf, but it retained human memory, mind, habits and upbringing. People, almost always men, became wolves either voluntarily with help from magic, wolf skin or enchanted objects such as rings, or involuntarily when somebody cursed or betrayed them. In medieval chivalrous literature, the traitor was always a woman, either a malicious wife or jealous step-mother. One of the conditions for a werewolf’s return to human form was clothes, a motif already found in the antiquity. Werewolves with cyclical transformations hid their clothes, because without them they would remain wolves until the end of their lives. the details of transformation into wolves in the Primary Chronicle, Russian heroic poems (byliny) or Serbian folklore are not known, but the circumstances indicate that this ability was attributed to wizards and heroes.

Dit masteronderzoek is een onderzoek naar anonieme pamfletten uit de 16de eeuw die in Antwerpen gedrukt zijn in de periode rondom de Val van Antwerpen (1585). De focus is op Antwerpen gelegd omdat in deze stad vele deskundige drukkers en uitgevers actief zijn geweest. Van hen zijn er vier uitgekozen om nader te bestuderen: Jan (III) van Ghelen, Niclaes Mollyns, Gilles van den Rade en Mattheus de Rische.
Om een antwoord te kunnen geven op de vraag in hoeverre Nederlandstalige teksten in anonieme pamfletten uit deze periode een grotere betekenis hebben gehad dan de directe omgeving waarin ze verkocht zijn, is onderzocht of er in het buitenland sprake is geweest van een navolging van deze teksten, via vertaling of bewerking.
Tevens is getracht het tekstennetwerk rond de vier geselecteerde drukkers beter in kaart te krijgen door van elke drukker een portfolio op te stellen, de publicaties te vergelijken, originele teksten te achterhalen, illustraties te beoordelen op hergebruik en drukkersportfolio’s te vergelijken.
In het onderzoek is veel gebruik gemaakt van bibliografisch onderzoek aan originele pamfletten en digitale versies ervan in collecties van erfgoedinstellingen en (universiteits)bibliotheken.
Alle vier geselecteerde drukker-uitgevers bleken pamfletten over de oorlogshandelingen te hebben uitgegeven als een soort voorloper van de nieuwskrant. De drukkers hebben een keuze moeten maken ten tijde van de Val van Antwerpen, met een wisseling van de macht: het protestantse Antwerpen kwam onder Spaans katholiek bewind. Voor de ene drukker betekende dit een noodzakelijk vertrek, voor de ander een aanpassing van zijn portfolio en een keuze in geloofs- en politieke uitingen.
De vier Antwerpse drukkers hebben allen pamfletteksten uitgegeven over wonderbaarlijke (natuur)verschijnselen die ook in het buitenland opgemerkt werden. Soms is de Antwerpse drukker een navolger van dit soort publicaties geweest, maar dit masteronderzoek toont aan dat deze drukkers met hun teksten ook een voorbeeldfunctie hebben gehad voor collega-drukkers in het buitenland. De Antwerpse teksten zijn dan terug te vinden in een Engelse, Franse of Duitse vertaling.
Er is zelfs een bestendige relatie tussen twee drukkers aan te tonen: het is in dit onderzoek gebleken dat de Duitse drukker Jozias Wörli met regelmaat Duitse pamfletten heeft uitgegeven met dezelfde teksten als de Antwerpse drukker Mattheus de Rische. Het is aannemelijk dat De Rische hierbij het voorbeeld is geweest en Wörli de navolger. In een enkel geval is dit ook onomstotelijk bewezen.
Dit masteronderzoek heeft aangetoond dat anonieme Nederlandstalige teksten uit de 16de eeuw een groter belang in het buitenland hebben gehad dan tot nu toe bekend is.

WEREWOLVES: A THREE-DIMENSIONAL CONTENT ANALYSIS OF FILMS FROM 1980 – 2014 revolves around how monsters function in stories. Monsters represent fears and teach social norms. They are often portrayed as “other”, but more recently the werewolf has appeared in media as more sympathetic (Brannon 2016, 21; Gilmore 2008, 362; Hughes 2009, 97). Limited research has systematically studied how werewolves are represented in the media. This content analysis focuses on how major werewolf characters are represented in 20 films.
The analysis showcases werewolf characters in today’s culture and what it means to be a monster by analyzing hybridity. This study presents a three-dimensional analysis of werewolves to conceptualize the core ways monsters exhibit human and monstrous traits. It will allow us to better understand the werewolf’s relationship to humanity. The dimensions: physical states, location and social integration, and relationships and emotional competency can be utilized in future studies to examine more closely how monsters, even those not so hybrid, may have hybrid traits.
Through hybridity, werewolves are malleable, serving different functions in films. Some werewolves in this study fit stereotypes of dangerous beings by wreaking havoc on humanity. Yet this study confirms the changing representation of the werewolf. Many werewolves analyzed for this study lived amongst humans, exhibited hybrid physicality, part human and never fully wolf, retained human cognition, and formed consensual non-violent romantic relationships with humans. Therefore, the findings suggest werewolves serve some of the same mythical functions as they did centuries ago but have taken on new functions as well.

Confirmed Presentation  to  "The Originals" Panel at the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association National Conference in Seattle, WA. March 21-25, 2016.

            On a network like The CW, viewers are often presented with much romanticized versions of masculinity and femininity. In no context is this more apparent than The Originals. However, The Originals, a spin-off The Vampire Diaries, pushes the envelope even further by exploring modern conceptions of masculinity through a complex series of characters. We are not only faced with what it means to be a man but what it means to be a man and affiliated with a non-human identity. While many scholars associated with masculinity studies aim to explore what it means to be a human male in Western society, The Originals grapples with what it means to be a male across centuries, cultures, and species. The direct result of these explorations is that The Originals articulates identity-based masculinity, including conceptions of species (dis)loyalty, personality, and origin.
            The story-world presented in this show includes a contentious group of species: vampires, witches, werewolves, and hybrids. Stylized as a modern mafia turf-war in the city of New Orleans, each group desires to control their surroundings as well as the other species that may threaten this desired control. Within each group exist male characters who strive to assert their power and dominance over others. However, these characters do not always possess traits that speak to their shared masculinity. Males in this series behave differently based on their time and place of origin as well as tactics associated with their specific species. Because of this amalgamation of identities, being male in The Originals is not easy and performing masculinity often compromises the trust, loyalty, and relationships around them. The Originals presents audiences with a complicated portrait of what it means to be a male and how masculine identity is further complicated by other identifying factors such as origin, self-identity, and species.

El mito del hombre lobo, convertido hoy en leyenda, es posiblemente una de las tradiciones que más interés ha despertado dentro de ámbitos como el de la historia, la antropología o la psicología. En este trabajo se propone un análisis exhaustivo del significado y la evolución del mito a lo largo de la antigüedad. Para ello, se prestará atención a las principales fuentes textuales conservadas y se propondrá una interpretación ligada al concepto de alteridad.

The myth of the werewolf, now a legend, is possibly one of the traditions that have aroused most interest in areas such as history, anthropology and psychology. In this work, we propose an exhaustive analysis of the meaning and evolution of myth throughout antiquity. To this aim, we will pay attention to the main textual sources preserved and we will propose an interpretation connected to the concept of otherness.

In this paper, the original Greek language texts of the Byzantine medical literature about lycanthropy are reviewed. The transformation of a human being into a wolf and the adoption of animal-like behaviour, which were already known from mythology and had been presented in the scientific works of ancient Greek and Roman physicians, were examined by six Byzantine physicians and explained as a type of melancholic depression or mania. In spite of the influence of Byzantine medicine, its rationality in the interpretation of lycanthropy was forgotten in medieval and Renaissance times when it was replaced by explanations based on demonic possession and witchcraft. More recently psychiatry has treated the phenomenon as a subject of medical inquiry and has again explained the condition in terms of mental disorder.

British folklore reveals a history of werewolf sightings in places where there were once wolves. I draw on theories of the weird and the eerie and on the turbulence of England in the era of late capitalism in my analysis of the representation of werewolves in contemporary urban myths. Werewolves are deliberately excluded from Mark Fisher's notion of the 'weird', because they behave in a manner that is entirely expected of them. I contradict this by interrogating the werewolf as spectre wolf, bringing it within the realms of the weird. In examining the Hull Werewolf, I put forward the suggestion that he represents not only our belief in him as a wolf phantom, but our collective guilt at the extinction of an entire indigenous species of wolf. Viewed in this way, he can reawaken the memory of what humans did to wolves, and redeem the Big Bad Wolf of our childhood nightmares.

High in the Carpathian Mountains, the local vampire, Dragomir, has everything running smoothly‒or at least so he thinks. Gone are the bad old days of vampires hunting humans, and vice versa, now they have an 'arrangement' and all that's needed is a quick bite every so often. Unfortunately Ileana Savu, the latest teenager due to participate in the 'arrangement', has other ideas, lots of other ideas, about what being a vampire living in the modern world should mean.

Blood Red Roses is an unusual and comic take on the old vampire story.

Popular Preternaturaliana was brought to life in May 2013 and serves as the official site of the Monsters and the Monstrous Area of the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association. We are sponsored by the Northeast Alliance for Scholarship on the Fantastic and hosted by The Association for the Advancement of Scholarship and Teaching of the Medieval in Popular Culture, We hope to provide a resource for further study and debate of the preternatural wherever and whenever it may appear.

As a hybrid monster, werewolves have stimulated questions regarding the relationship between humans and animals. Their duality has also been used as a metaphor for the presentation of adolescence from 'Little Red Riding Hood' to Teen Wolf. Both Maggie Stiefvater's Shiver trilogy and Annette Curtis Klause's Blood and Chocolate are YA texts which centre on the love story between a human and a werewolf. They use the figure of the werewolf to contrast the boundary between
child/ adult with that between animal/ human. Their representations centre on the relationship between self-control versus hormonally fuelled sexuality and aggression, and the idea of evolving from being a child to an adult. Blood and Chocolate shows embracing being a werewolf as part of growing up whereas Shiver presents being a werewolf as a traumatic loss of self from which to escape.
Yet both novels end with the acceptance that werewolves and humans cannot inhabit the same space. Klause's lycanthropic protagonist, Vivian is unable to inform Aidan, her human partner, that she means him no harm. Aidan's liberal attitudes are shown to be superficial leaving Vivian to return to her pack and accept her role as alpha female. In Shiver, Sam and Grace are separated by the wolf's lack of voice. Their only hope is to find a cure for the disease of lycanthropy so that they can remain human. The werewolf's lack of language when transformed is pivotal in presenting adolescence and the state of being a werewolf as untenable in the long term. By comparing the representation of lycanthropy and adolescence, this paper argues that the use of this metaphor denies the possibility of communication between human and wolf, and reaffirms the boundary between humans and animals.

An article for 'Folklore Thursday': Werewolves are considered to be a traditional monster in the twenty-first-century popular culture. This is in part due to the creation of a lycanthropic tradition based on appropriated folklore. Whilst pulp fiction is often related to the burgeoning genre of science fiction, the use of Victorian folklore and pseudo-folklore regarding the lycanthrope has a clear influence on pulp fiction werewolves. Brian Frost argues that the pulp magazines of the early twentieth-century invigorated the werewolf literature by making the tales more plot-driven and absorbing them into fantasy literature (The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature [2003], pp. 106-108). While Chantal Bourgault Du Coudray draws attention to the increased overlap between the detective narrative and werewolf stories in order to locate the abhorrent element of society (The Curse of the Werewolf [2006], pp. 42-43). Certainly the trope of the detective helps to define the werewolf for a new generation of readers, but it is the use of folklore, and sometimes ‘fauxlore’, based on academic research which authenticates the portrayal of this monster, giving it a distinguished lineage.

Whilst Dracula is considered to be the seminal novel about vampires, it remains haunted by the figure of the wolf who exists on the outskirts of the text, appearing at moments of heightened emotions. The wolves are introduced through the sound of their howls and continue be denied a realised physicality appearing as wraiths rather than animals. Their presence is laden with metaphor. Count Dracula is peculiarly wolfish: the dual nature of Count Dracula viewed through critical theory regarding human/animal dichotomies encapsulates ideas about Victorian notions of civilisation versus the untamed ‘other’.  This figure of the ‘Other’ within Dracula encompasses contemporary fears pertaining to evolution and degeneration; an increasing instability within masculinity identity; the rise of the New Woman; the ongoing dominion over nature seen during the Industrial Revolution; and the sense of flux at the approaching fin-de-siècle.
Towards the middle of the novel, there is a pivotal moment in which the ‘tame’ wolf in London Zoo escapes; an act which, according to its keeper, is caused by the perverse influence of Dracula who visits the wolves’ enclosure. After this event Lucy becomes a vampire and Mina is attacked by Dracula. The parallel between the potentially wild but caged creature being freed by the vampire’s presence and the fall of Victorian women into wantonness exemplifies another function of vampire/wolf relations within the novel. Femininity is in the same realm as nature and can only be controlled by society’s civilising constraints. These fears create a need to re-assert social boundaries: boundaries which are challenged by the fluid presence of Count Dracula as he slips between human and animal form. There are strong parallels between the description of Count Dracula’s vampiric nature and the wolves that haunt the text: shown categorically in Dracula’s ability to become a wolf.
The overlap between vampires and wolves within Dracula is particularly interesting in regards to the creation of a Gothic natural landscape and the function of the vampire figure within the novel as a centre of amorphous fears surrounding late Victorian social concerns. Emily Gerard’s travel diaries, The Land Beyond the Forest (1888), form a basis for the Victorian fascination with an Eastern Europe awash with jarring superstitions at odds with the scientific and technological revolution taking place in Britain. Her work was an inspiration to Stoker’s creation of Dracula and its’ Gothic landscape. The Transylvanian wolves at the beginning novel are seen through Jonathan Harker’s eyes as alien creatures who reflect the Gothic landscape of Hungary – the term ‘uncanny’ is repeatedly used in his journal. Freud argued that the true quality of the ‘uncanny’ is the return of what was once familiar but has become unfamiliar; it is not without irony that wolves were originally native to Britain but were strategically wiped out as part of the ‘civilising’ of the land. Stoker relocates the figure of the howling wolf so that it becomes part of a universal Gothic imagination: a symbol of a vengeful natural world tearing at the borders of Western civilisation.

As Andrew Barger notes, the ‘transformation of the werewolf in literature made its greatest strides in the 19th century when the monster leapt from poetry to the short story’, inspiring authors as diverse as Catherine Crowe, Rudyard Kipling and G. W. M. Reynolds. This change brought with it varied literary representations of werewolves as the Victorian period experienced numerous social changes, such as the fear of the ‘animal within’ due to Charles Darwin’s seminal text On the Origin of Species (1859). His focus on human evolution led to growing concern regarding personal atavism and social decline, which culminated in a fear of devolution. This paper extends Victorian devolution theories by examining popular werewolf short stories in relation to the waning natural environment and the Victorian cultural imagination. Werewolf literature relies on the permanence of the natural world, such as the moon, and explores mankind’s relationship with it. Nevertheless, in the nineteenth century significant environmental changes occurred; the industrial revolution caused an influx of people from rural to urban areas, and native wolves became extinct. My paper addresses the effects of urbanization on the depiction of werewolves in popular literature: how the destroyed natural environment echoes back through the modernised landscape; how werewolves embed their transformation onto their new environment; and how the memories of this past environment remain as the werewolf leaves its mark. As a figure divided, the werewolf transformation either forces a return to nature in the midst of busy urban life – an involuntary return reversion to a savage state suited to scavenging the wilds – or its hybrid form allows communing with nature as well as an investment in the modern world. The werewolf is the perfect creature to live in this tumultuous and uncertain setting, gaining the best of both environments.

Algernon Blackwood describes the werewolf in ‘The Camp of the Dog’ (1908), part of his John Silence series, as ‘the savage […] instincts of a passionate man scouring the world in his fluidic body’ echoing Elphias Levy’s description in Transcendental Magic (1856). Other weird writers appropriated versions of European folklore to historicise their werewolves. Seabury Quinn’s ‘The Man Who Cast No Shadow’ (1927) features a stand-off between occult detective, de Grandin, and Count Czerny, a Hungarian Count who has hairy palms, drinks blood, and casts no reflection in a mirror. The tale bears all the hallmarks of Stoker’s Dracula (1897) – which also (mis)appropriated Eastern European folklore. The recurrence of the detective functions as a Van-Helsing-like figure defining the werewolf for a new generation of readers. Using these, and other examples, this paper will consider how the use of earlier folklore gave pulp werewolves a veneer of Gothic authenticity.