Medieval Werewolf Research Paper

In Medieval European legends, werewolves, also known as lycanthropes, were hated predators who were dangerous to humans and were linked to greed and gluttony. Those convicted of being werewolves were burned at the stake. Some medieval werewolf stories presented a man trapped in “bestial form” (Hopkins). In Marie de France’s Bisclavret, stealing a wolf’s clothes prevented him from returning to his human form (De France). In other cases, it was a witch’s magic that bound a man to his werewolf curse (Walker). The later Middle Ages depict werewolves as cursed shape-shifters who transformed into demonic wolf-life creatures in the night. One tale tells of this half-beast, half-human creature as a servant of the devil who was granted the power of shape shifting in exchange for terrorizing Christian villagers (Andrew). Unlike traditional stories that claim the metamorphosis is a result of the full moon, medieval legends tell of man being stripped naked of his humanity and morphed into a wolf by the devil himself. While these tales were most likely a product of the dominance of Christianity during the Middle Ages, traditional …show more content…
Generally, stories regarding mythological creatures are told from a human’s point of view as they disapprove of wolves, but Le Guin chooses to tell her story from a wolf’s perspective. This brings up the question of whether the human or animal element is the true form of a werewolf (Cohen). The suppressed animalistic traits of a human being are brought out during a werewolf’s transformation as he becomes a mixture of both human and beast. Likewise, the narrator’s husband was given human descriptions such as “gentle” and “sweet-tempered”, but these quickly became beastly descriptors of “hateful” and “cross” (Le