werewolf The werewolf (Old English:
wer, a man +
wulf, a wolf) or lycanthrope is one of the most familiar monsters of European mythology. It has stalked the popular imagination from antiquity through to modern times. In classical literature, the werewolf was usually depicted as the victim of a divine or hereditary curse. In Plato's
Dialogues, King Lykaos of Arcadia was changed into a wolf by Zeus after he attempted to trick the gods into eating human flesh. When Pausanias repeated this tale in the second century
ad this curse had been transformed into a racial characteristic. He believed that Arcadia was a nation of werewolves, whilst Virgil and Herodotus identified the Neurians of north east Europe as a lycanthrope tribe.
This early conception of the lycanthrope as a victim of heredity left the monster in a morally ambiguous position. The werewolf could be a benign individual, trapped within a bestial frame. In the Eastern and Celtic churches, St Christopher was often portrayed as a dog-headed convert, a representative of Cynocephali who inhabited the mountain ranges of Northern India. In the medieval romances of
William and the Werewolf by Guillaume de Palerne and
Laide Bisclaveret, by Mavie de France, the werewolves appear as noble favourites of the king, tricked into a wolf form by their adulterous wives, and later redeemed into humanity through royal kindness. As late as the seventeenth century the belief that werewolves could serve as ‘dogs of God’ persisted amongst the Russian and Baltic peasantry. The Italian historian Carlo Ginzburg has reconstructed the trial of one Livonian werewolf, Thiess, who claimed he and his werewolf companions travelled annually to the underworld to protect the harvest from the Devil and sorcerors.
For the most part however, werewolves have been depicted as malign and demonic creatures. The Paschal imagery of Christ as the Lamb of God encouraged the wolf's satanic associations. In post-Reformation Europe, the werewolf was largely seen as a male counterpart of the witch, obtaining his power through a pact made with the devil. Peter Stump, the most notorious werewolf of the sixteenth century, began his lycanthropic career of mass murder, rape, and incest after Satan presented him with a magical wolf skin. His crimes were apparently emulated by thousands of others. Recent authors have claimed that there were 30 000 recorded cases of werewolves between 1520 and 1630 in France alone. Such high estimates must be questioned in light of the recent revisionist historiography of the witch craze.
Post-reformation Europe also saw a growing attempt to medicalize the werewolf. Physicians such as Simon Goulart, Johannes Schrenk von Graftenberg, and Robert Burton claimed that lycanthropy was a form of delusional insanity brought about through an excess of black bile. The condition was epitomized by the madness of Duke Ferdinand in John Webster's
Duchess of Malfi. Ferdinand is apprehended clutching a human leg and howling at the
moon. As his captors explain, the Duke ‘[s]aid he was a wolf, only the difference/Was a wolf's skin was hairy on the outside/His on the inside’. Similar attempts to explain lycanthropy as a delusion rooted in illness have been repeated throughout the twentieth century. Authors have variously suggested congenital hypertrichosis (abnormal
hair growth),
rabies canina, and ergot poisoning as possible pathological causes. More recently, Dr Lee Illis, of Guy's Hospital, London, has claimed that werewolves may be victims of porphyria, a disease which results in photosensitivity, reddening of the teeth, and nervous disorders.
With the appearance of novels such as George Reynolds'
Wagner the Werewolf (1857) or Dudley Costello's
Lycanthropy in London or the Wehrwolf of Wilton Crescent (1859), more psychological accounts of the werewolf emerged. In these works, the wolf-man emerges as a kind of romantic anti-hero, torn between social mores and carnal desire. These moral struggles were repeated in the Hollywood B-movies of the 1950s. Films such as American International's
I was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) or Royal's
Werewolf in a Girls' Dormitory (1962), presented the lycanthrope as a sympathetic character, led into a life of unbridled lust after attending beat gatherings and bongo parties. This model of the werewolf as a figure in which adolescents could identify their own awkward passions persists to this day. The title track of Michael Jackson's
Thriller (1983), the world's best selling pop album, focused on the emotional and sexual difficulties of a pubescent lycanthrope.
Through its popular associations with
sex and
violence, the werewolf has become a rich symbol for man's bifurcated human nature. Modern academics see lycanthropy as a fantasy which reveals fundamental aspects of modern personality. The Jungian anthropologist, Robert Eisler, thought that werewolves emerged through an ancestral memory of man's transition from fruit-gatherer to hunter. Man's identification with carnivorous animals, Eisler claimed, was a psychic operation that allowed him to conquer his disgust at killing. This identification could still be seen in hunting groups such as the leopard men of East Africa, Operation Werewolf (a post-war Nazi resistance organization), and British Guards Regiments who continue to decorate themselves with leopard pelts and bearskins.
Sigmund Freud offered a much more reductionist explanation for man's lupine identification. In his study of Wolf-Man, a young Russian whose childhood had been tormented by dreams of wolves that beckoned him from beyond his bedroom window, Freud suggested that the fantasy must be rooted in a primal scene of parental or animal sex. The French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari contested this interpretation of the dream. They argued that the lupine fantasy could be seen as a fundamental challenge to Western notions of subjectivity. It was a dream in which man cast off his atomic individuality, as the lycanthrope surrendered to the multiplicity of the wolf pack.
Rhodri Hayward
Bibliography
Douglas, A. (1992). The beast within: man, myths and werewolves. Chapmans, London.
Woodward, I. (1979). The werewolf delusion. Paddington press, New York and London.
See also
vampire.
