Werewolf Myth & Fiction

Considering QueeredFiction's first and forthcoming anthology release, let's talk about werewolves. Despite their prevalence in horror movies, werewolves haven't always been the spawn of night terrors and in fact modern fiction has been increasingly portraying them in less damning hues. For those of you finding the idea of fantasy werewolves a little more tricky, consider the following:

Werewolf Myth
Werewolves, also known as lycanthropes, are mythological or folkloric humans with the ability to shapeshift into wolves or wolf-like creatures, either purposely, being bitten by another werewolf or after being placed under a curse. This transformation is often associated with the appearance of the full moon, as popularly noted by the medieval chronicler Gervase of Tilbury, although it may have been recognized in earlier times among the ancient Greeks through the writings of Petronius. Werewolves are often granted extra-human strength and senses, far beyond those of both wolves or men. The werewolf is generally held as a European character, although its lore spread through the world in later times. Shape-shifters, similar to werewolves, are common in tales from all over the world, most notably amongst the American Indians, though most of them involve animal forms other than wolves.

Werewolves are a frequent subject of modern fictional books and films, although fictional werewolves have been attributed traits distinct from those of original folklore, most notably the vulnerability to silver bullets. Werewolves continue to endure in modern culture and fiction, with books, films and television shows cementing the werewolf's stance as a dominant figure in horror.

Literary origins
In medieval romances, such as Bisclavret, and Guillaume de Palerme the werewolf is relatively benign, appearing as the victim of evil magic and aiding knights errant.

However, in most folk tales, (influenced by medieval theology) the werewolf was demonic, part of Satan's army of darkness, inimical to the human race and having a craving for human flesh. This appears in such later fiction as "The White Wolf of the Hartz Mountains": an episode in the novel The Phantom Ship (1839) by Marryat, featuring a demonic femme fatale who transforms from woman to wolf.

Sexual themes are common in werewolf fiction; the protagonist kills his girlfriend as she walks with a former lover in Werewolf of London, suggesting sexual jealousy. The writers of Wolf Man were careful in depicting killings as motivated out of hunger.

In the fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, the figure of the werewolf is more ambiguous and subject to an allegorical or Freudian interpretation. These tales are the inspiration behind modern fiction such as The Company of Wolves (1979) by Angela Carter (filmed asThe Company of Wolves (1984)) and the film Ginger Snaps (2000) which address female sexuality

Nineteenth century
Nineteenth century Gothic horror stories drew on previous folklore and legend to present the theme of the werewolf in a new fictional form. An early example is Hugues, the Wer-Wolf by Sutherland Menzies published in 1838. In another, Wagner the Wehr-Wolf (1847) by G. W. M. Reynolds, we find the classic subject of a man cursed to be transformed into a werewolf at the time of the full moon: representing the split personality and evil, bloodthirsty, dark side of humanity itself. Other werewolf stories of this period include The Wolf-Leader (1857) by Alexandre Dumas and Hugues-le-Loup (1869) by Erckmann-Chatrian.

A later Gothic story Robert Lewis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886) has an implicit werewolf subtext, according to some commentators. This has been made explicit in some recent adaptations of this story, such the BBC TV series Jekyll (2007).

A rapacious female werewolf who appears in the guise of a seductive femme-fatale before transforming into lupine form to devour her hapless male victims is the protagonist of Clemence Houseman's acclaimed The Were-wolf published in 1896.

Twentieth century
The twentieth century saw an explosion of werewolf short stories and novels published in both England and America. The famed English supernatural story writer Algernon Blackwood wrote a number of werewolf short stories. These often had an occult aspect to them. American Pulp magazines of the 1920–50s such as Weird Tales include many memorable werewolf tales, written by such authors as H. Warner Munn, Seabury Quinn and Manly Wade Wellman. The most renowned werewolf novel of the twentieth century was The Werewolf of Paris (1933) by American author Guy Endore. This has been accorded classic status and is considered by some to be the Dracula of werewolf literature. It was adapted as The Curse of the Werewolf in 1961 for Hammer Film Productions.

The first feature film to use an anthropomorphic werewolf was Werewolf of London in 1935 (not to be confused with the 1981 film of a similar title) establishing the canon that the werewolf always kills what he loves most. The main werewolf of this film was a dapper London scientist who retained some of his style and most of his human features after his transformation.

However, he lacked warmth, and it was left to the tragic character Talbot played by Lon Chaney Jr. in 1941's The Wolf Man to capture the public imagination. This catapulted the werewolf into public consciousness. The theme of lycanthropy as a disease or curse reached its standard treatment in the film, which contained the now-famous rhyme:

Even a man who is pure in heart
And says his prayers each night
May become a wolf when the wolf-bane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.

This movie draws on elements traditional folklore and fiction, such as the vulnerability of the werewolf to a silver bullet (as seen for instance in the legend of Beast of Gevaudan), though at the climax of the film the Wolf Man is actually dispatched with a silver headed cane.

The process of transmogrification is portrayed in such films and works of literature to be painful. The resulting wolf is typically cunning but merciless, and prone to killing and eating people without compunction regardless of the moral character of the person when human.

Lon Chaney himself became somewhat typecast as the Wolfman and reprised his role in several sequels for Universal Studios. In these films the werewolf lore of the first film was clarified. In Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943) it is firmly established that the Wolf Man is revived at every full moon. In House of Frankenstein (1944) silver bullets are used for the first time to dispatch him. Further sequels were the House of Dracula (1945) and the parodic Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948).

The success of Universal's The Wolf Man prompted rival Hollywood film companies Columbia Studios and Fox Studios to bring out their own, now somewhat obscure, werewolf movies. The first of these was The Undying Monster produced by Fox in 1942, adapted from a werewolf novel of the same name by Jessie Douglas Kerruish, published in 1936.

In 1981, two prominent werewolf films, The Howling and An American Werewolf in London, both drew on themes from the Universal series.

More recently, the portrayal of werewolves has taken a more sympathetic turn in some circles. With the rise of environmentalism and other back-to-nature ideals, the werewolf has come to be seen as a representation of humanity allied more closely with nature. A prime example of this outlook can be seen in the role-playing game Werewolf: The Apocalypse (1992) in which players roleplay various werewolf characters who work on behalf of Gaia against the destructive supernatural spirit named Wyrm, who represents the forces of destructive industrialization and pollution. Author Whitley Strieber previously explored these themes in his novels The Wolfen (1978), in which werewolves are shown to act as predators of humanity, acting as a "natural" control on their population now that it has been removed from the traditional limits of nature, and The Wild (1991), in which the werewolf is portrayed as a medium through which to bring human intelligence and spirit back into nature. The heroic werewolf has also returned via the paranormal romance genre, where wolf-like characteristics such as loyalty are shown as positive traits in a prospective mate.

Werewolves have featured a number of times in the long-running British science fiction television series Doctor Who and its other media tie-ins. The first time a werewolf appeared in the television series was in the Seventh Doctor serial The Greatest Show in the Galaxy (1988). A wolf-man appears in the 1986 Sixth Doctor story Mindwarp, and the primords in the 1970 Third Doctor story Inferno are also lupine in appearance, but in both cases these are induced mutations rather than people who switched between human and wolf forms).

In the Harry Potter series (1997-2007) the most prominent werewolf is Remus Lupin who's portrayed as struggling with his curse and terrified of infecting someone, though repeatedly careless in ensuring his being safe when transformed. The series also includes a werewolf villain Fenrir Greyback, who fits more with the older image of werewolves. The Potter books, while showing the intense threat the humans transformed to bloodthirsty monsters pose to the population, essentially use werewolves as a methaphor for marginalised and discriminated against groups in modern society.

A very popular modern subgenre consists of stories that treat werewolves as separate race or species (either science fictional or magical) or as persons using magic in order to deliberately transform into wolves at will. Such current-day werewolf fiction almost exclusively involves lycanthropy being either a hereditary condition or being transmitted like a disease by the bite of another werewolf. The form a werewolf takes is not always an ordinary wolf, but is often anthropomorphic or may be otherwise larger and more powerful than an ordinary wolf. Sometimes the beast form of the werewolf will have some physical characteristics borrowed from an animal species other than the wolf, as can be seen in the boar-like werewolf of Wild Country (2006) and the cat-like werewolves of Underworld (2003). Many modern werewolves are also supposedly immune to damage caused by ordinary weapons, being vulnerable only to silver objects (usually a bullet or blade). This negative reaction to silver is sometimes so strong that the mere touch of the metal on a werewolf's skin will cause burns.

Despite the recent upsurge in the motif of heroic werewolves, unsympathetic portrayals of werewolves as monsters also continue to be common in popular culture. This is especially true in movies, which are only slowly incorporating trends in written fiction. There are very few werewolf movies outside the horror genre.

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.
It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Werewolf" and Wikipedia article "Werewolf fiction".

Image credit: rrikk on Flickr