Search results
The werewolf has become an increasingly familiar figure in the worlds of Young Adult literature and popular culture as a means of representing the transition to adulthood and the sense of isolation that is felt by many teenagers. 1 Yet, the relationship between human and animal identity in children's literature is not a new phenomenon. Using the example of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and its adaptation by Disney, which was aimed at a young audience, Susan Z. Swann argues that animal characters in
metre high plateau in the mountains, do not hesitate long after hearing this news. They interpret the attack as the work of a human being, of a werewolf. Suspicion soon falls on an elderly neighbour, Perrenette Gandillon, who has long been reputed not only to master magic but also to use it aggressively. Gandillon senses the mistrust and flees the village. But this reaction simply confirms the suspicions of the
, that are considered to be the third largest in the world after the Irish and Finnish archives. The existence of the Estonian Folklore Archives (EFA) has, to a great degree, determined the development of the study of Estonian folklore in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The archives contain approximately 1,400 texts on the topic of werewolves. This article discusses the werewolf texts collected
depicts tribes in the Iroquois Confederacy (Oneidas, Cayugas, Onondagas, Mohawks and Senecas) as ‘loup-garous’, the animalism is eventually distilled down to a single figure – Linotte – whose ability to transform into a wolf proves fatal to the hero. As a werewolf, Linotte is the ultimate symbol of otherness in nineteenth-century fiction – female, indigenous and monstrous
Twentieth century cinema involving monster conflict featured solitary monsters in combat (Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, for example). The writing of Anne Rice and the RPG Vampire: The Masquerade by White Wolf Games introduced the idea of Gothic communities and civilisations in conflict. It was not until after the terror attacks of 11 September that the idea of a clash of civilisations between supernatural societies fully emerged into the mainstream of popular culture. This essay explores the construction of a clash of civilisations between supernatural communities as a form of using the Gothic as a metaphor for contemporary terrorism in film and television series such as Underworld, Twilight, True Blood and The Vampire Diaries. Inevitably, it is the lycanthropes that are the disempowered and disenfranchised society and are alternately exploited by and rebel against the dominant vampire civilisation grown decadent and on the verge of collapse. Post-9/11 Gothic posits a world in which vampire society is the new normal, and werewolves represent a hidden danger within. Lycanthropes must be controlled, profiled and/or fought and defeated. Through close readings of the cinematic and televisual texts, I explore the vampire/werewolf clash as metaphor and metonym for the war on terror.
This book explores the cultural history of the female werewolf, from her first appearance in medieval literature to recent incarnations in film, television and popular literature. It focuses on folkloric records of the island of Saaremaa, Estonia, a territory in which, unusually, there are more folktales of female werewolves than male. The book also explores tropes and strategies of feminisation evident in Werewolf: The Apocalypse to reveal an almost unique disavowal of the masculine werewolf in favour of traditions of presenting the female werewolf. The examination of Honoré Beaugrand's 'The Werewolves' offers fruitful discussion of the female werewolf's integration into colonial discourse and narrative. In the nineteenth century, at the fin de siècle, female authors began to produce fiction about the female werewolf. Two of the most interesting examples of this, which have been curiously neglected by critics, are Clemence Housman's novella The Werewolf and Rosamund Marriott Watson's poem 'A Ballad of the Were-wolf', written under the pseudonym Graham R. Tomson and published in 1891. Then, the book examines twenty-first-century young adult paranormal romance texts, considering the ways in which such texts associate lycanthropy with contemporary idealisations and constructions of the post-adolescent female. It explores presentations of body-centred violence in film, drawing parallels between female werewolves and other violent females in horror cinema. Finally, the book also examines cinematic representations of the femme animale with an exploration of how this conceptualisation of the feminine might inform a reading of Ginger Snaps.
electrical thunderstorms. The sound of the wolf is a recurring feature in haunted-house attractions, Gothic radio programmes and even the DVD menus for classic horror films. It is an immediately recognisable aural signifier for horror. The aim of this chapter will therefore be to consider the role that sound plays in the construction of the Gothic and horror genres, in particular through the soundscape of the werewolf film. While there is a growing body of work on music in relation to horror and the Gothic, sound still remains a too-often overlooked
Introduction The nineteenth century was a significant one in terms of the figure of the female werewolf. The history of the werewolf in fiction was by this point nearly 5,000 years old, 1 and although the female werewolf had appeared in chronicles and treatises on witchcraft prior to 1800, such as Henri Boguet’s Discours execrable des
Beyond the curse Does it always have to come down to the curse, the curse of blood, the curse of biology? Certainly there is something to be said for the idea that being a werewolf entails inevitable surrender to the natural, primal or beastly. Indeed this way of thinking might seem especially apt for the figure of the female werewolf. As
figure and distinguish her from the landscape even as her whiteness suggests that she is part of it (see Figure 14.1 ). 14.1 Ralph Lauren Autumn/Winter 2015 campaign, Sanne Vloet with dogs The sequence of images featured in the advertisement brings together many of the signifiers that characterise female werewolf stories