Werewolves, shape-shifting and animal identities
The use of animal identities - from personal names to the use of animal disguise - is popularly associated with pre-Christian European societies.
However, until the first detailed narratives of shape-changing in the 12th century, the evidence is extremely fragmentary and ambiguous.
Many species feature in the reportire of shape shifters, but my research on the wolf has lead me to focus on the werewolf. Werewolves are such a distinct and recurring
feature of European culture, that it's unsuprising their changing roles -- right through to the modern day -- are the subject of ongoing research, as well as continuing to capture the popular imagination. The body of material on werewolves has grown over the 20th century, and into the 21st, at an exponential rate.
There is tantalising icongraphic and literary evidence for animalistic mumming, mimicry and perceived metamorphosis in northern Europe in the latter centuries of the first millennium, and during
the 12th century a series of werewolf stories begin to circulate in north-west Europe, widely interpreted as a fusion of literary motifs and local folklore. But just how local is 'local'?
Werewolves are documented from Ireland through to Lithuania, but their characteristics and behaviour can vary quite dramatically. Sometimes they run in packs, sometimes as solitary
individuals, sometimes they are firmly integrated in a community, sometimes they are complete outcasts. More often than not, particularly in Western Europe, they attack, kill and eat humans. The first documented werewolf trials start at the beginning of the 15th century, the start of what
is referred to by central European researchers as the werwolfprozesse (see Lorey 2008), situated within the accelerating persecution of witches in the early modern era. However, like witches, the extent and nature of werewolf
encounters and trials is being re-assesed by scholars of witchcraft, particularly in central and north-western Continental Europe, where most of the trials took place.
The story does not end here. European werewolf beliefs are brought over to North America, where settlers encounter a variety of indigenous traditions of shape-shifting.
The few researchers who have investigated these colonial encounters have identified a cultural fusion resulting in a new generation of hybridised North American werewolves.
Attitudes to werewolves in the 18th and 19th centuries in the West are generally well documented, and the literary werewolf is readily adopted by film-makers in the 20th century, spawning a continuing
spate of movies selectively combining elements from various cultures and creating their own lycanthropic mythology in the process.
The combination of human and animal bodies into a hybrid is widely attested across the world, from the earliest sedentary societies through to hyper-urban cultures.
Interpretation must clearly start, and perhaps end, with each specific context, but this recurring attempt to breach species boundaries is shared by
multiple and diverse societies. Whether it is possible to understand something about what it is to be human, and our relationship with other species, through the difficult quest for the shape-shifter in the past and present, remains to be seen.
References
Lorey, E. 2008 Werwolfprozesse
in der Frühen Neuzeit
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