Werewolf fiction

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Adventures Into Darkness, a Golden Age comics series that ran for 10 issues from August 1952-1954

Werewolf fiction denotes the portrayal of werewolves and other shapeshifting man/woman-beasts,
in the media of literature, drama, film, games, and music. Werewolf literature
includes folklore, legend, saga, fairy tales, Gothic and Horror fiction, fantasy fiction and poetry. Such
stories may be supernatural, symbolic or allegorical. A classic American cinematic example of the
theme is The Wolf Man (1941) and in later films joins with Frankenstein's monster and Count
Dracula, as one of the three famous icons of the modern day horror. However, werewolf fiction is an
exceptionally diverse genre with ancient folkloric roots and manifold modern re-interpretations.
Contents
[hide]

1 Literary origins

2 Nineteenth century

3 Twentieth century

4 See also

5 References

6 Further reading

Literary origins[edit]
For more on werewolves in ancient myth, legend and folklore see Werewolf
In Greek Mythology, there is a story of an Arcadian King called Lycaon who tested Zeus by
serving him a dish of his slaughtered and dismembered son to see if Zeus was really all
knowing. As punishment for his trickery, Zeus transformed Lycaon into a wolf and killed his 50
sons by lightning bolts, but supposedly revived Lycaon's son Nyctimus, who the king had
slaughtered.
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 legends influenced by medieval theology the werewolf was a satanic beast
with 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.[citation needed]
The wolf in the fairy tale "Little Red Riding Hood" has been reinterpreted as a werewolf in many
works of fiction, such as The Company of Wolves (1979) by Angela Carter (and its 1984 film
adaptation) and the film Ginger Snaps (2000), which address female sexuality. 2011 also saw
the release of Red Riding Hood (2011 film) with Amanda Seyfried in the main role, with the
character name of Valerie.

Nineteenth century[edit]

The Were-Wolf by Housman.

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 who, although a kind-hearted man himself,
accepts a deal with the devil to become a werewolf for 18 months accompanying Dr. Faustus
and killing humans, in exchange for youth and wealth. "The Man-Wolf" (1831) byLeitch
Ritchie yields the werewolf in an 11th-century setting, while Catherine Crowe penned what is
believed to be the first werewolf short story by a woman: "A Story of a Weir-Wolf" (1846). [1] 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 Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1886),
has an implicit werewolf subtext, according to Colin Wilson.[2] This has been made explicit in
some recent adaptations of this story, such as the BBC TV series Jekyll (2007).
Stevenson's Olalla (1887) offers more explicit werewolf content, but, like Strange Case of Dr
Jekyll and Mr Hyde, this aspect remains subordinate to the story's larger themes.
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
Housman's acclaimed The Were-wolf published in 1896.[3]

Twentieth century[edit]
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 to 1950s, such as Weird Tales, include many werewolf tales, written by
such authors as H. Warner Munn, Seabury Quinn, and Manly Wade Wellman.[4] 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.[5] 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. [6]
However, he lacked warmth, and it was left to the tragic character Larry Talbot played by Lon
Chaney Jr. in 1941's The Wolf Man to capture the public imagination. This catapulted the
werewolf into public consciousness.[6] 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 by night
May become a wolf
When the wolfbane blooms
And the autumn moon is bright.

This movie draws on elements of 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 Gvaudan),[7] 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 Jr 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.[8]
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. 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. Mez
the werewolf from "L'histoire de la dame de Domination" is a pragmatist who does what he must
to survive.
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)
during which the young punk girl Mags is shown to have aversion tomoon signs and reacted in a
violent, animalistic manner to various acts of violence throughout the story. In the cliffhanger to
the third episode, she was seen to transform into a discoloured, ferocious, humanoid depiction
of a lupine-like creature when a silvery-blue lighting effect is shone upon her during the climactic
act in a circus-ring. 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. A (more traditional) werewolf also appeared in the 2006 Tenth Doctor episode "Tooth and
Claw".
In the Harry Potter series (19972007) the most prominent werewolf is Remus Lupin who's
portrayed as struggling with his curse and terrified of infecting someone. 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 metaphor for marginalised
groups who have been discriminated against 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). Many modern werewolves are also supposedly immune to damage caused by
ordinary weapons, being vulnerable only to silverobjects (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.
In the movie War Wolves, recently shown on the Sci-Fi channel, lycanthropy doesn't have an
influence on the "victims'" alignment. Instead, it is up to the individual to choose whether to use
their abilities for good or evil. Both the heroes and villains in the movie are werewolves from the
same military unit.

See also[edit]

List of werewolf fiction

Werewoman

WereGarurumon and WereGarurumonBlack

References[edit]
1.

Jump up^ Barger, Andrew; Shifters: The Best Werewolf Short Stories 1800-1849, 2010.
p.85; ISBN 978-1933747255

2.

Jump up^ Wilson, Colin "Werewolves", in Jack Sullivan (ed.) The Penguin Encyclopedia of
Horror and the Supernatural (Viking Press, 1986) pp. 453-455 (out of print); (Random
HouseValue Publishing, 1989) ISBN 978-0-517-61852-3

3.
4.

5.
6.

7.
8.

Jump up^ Brian Frost (1973) Book of the Werewolf: 29

Jump up^ Stefan Dziemianowicz, "The Werewolf" in Icons of Horror and the Supernatural,
edited byS.T. Joshi.Greenwood Press 2007, ISBN 0313337810 (pp. 653-668).
Jump up^ Squires, J., "Endore, Guy S." in Sullivan
^ Jump up to:a b Searles B (1988). Films of Science Fiction and Fantasy. New York: Harry N.
Abrams. 16567. ISBN 0-8109-0922-7.
Jump up^ Robert Jackson (1995) Witchcraft and the Occult. Devizes, Quintet Publishing: 25
Jump up^ Berardinelli, James. An American Werewolf in London (review), ReelReviews.com,
no date

Further reading[edit]

Black, George Fraser. A List of Works Relating to Lycanthropy. New York: New York Public
Library Publications, 1919. (earliest published list of werewolf fiction)

Du Coudray, Chantal Bourgault. The Curse of the Werewolf. London : I. B. Tauris,

2006. ISBN 1-84511-158-3 (book on literary symbolism of the werewolf)

Flores, Nona C. Animals in the Middle Ages: A Book of Essays. New York: Garland,
1996. ISBN 0-8153-1315-2 (contains learned commentary on William of Palerne)

Frost, Brian J. The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature. Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press 2003. ISBN 0-87972-860-4 (contains long lists of novels and short stories, especially
pre-1970s ones, with excerpts)

Steiger, Brad. The Werewolf Book: The Encyclopedia of Shapeshifting Beings. Visible Ink
Press, 1999. ISBN 1-57859-078-7 (contains long list of movies, medium list of novels)