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The Powers of Were-Goats in Tommaso Landolfi‘s La pietra lunare (The Moonstone)
Jewell links the were-animals in Tommaso Landolfis novel La pietra lunare to population ecology in the 1930s. Landolfi imagines and narrates a were-population explosion in the specific historical context of the changes fascism brought to rural life when it favored a grain-based economy. When state policy attempts to manage grazing populations and the culture of transhumance, the uncontrolled growth of fast-breeding, broad-ranging, mountain-going were-goats in the novel puts the validity of fascist agricultural policy into question. When in secret at the full moon they couple monstrously and multiply, were-animals thoroughly challenge the effectiveness of discourses of controlled population management.