Search

The wolf has stalked human society for centuries, becoming a figure of fear and reverence. It is unsurprising that such a figure would infiltrate culture via folklore, myth, and legend, most notably in the form of the werewolf. A review of historical references reveals that the figure of the 'she-wolf' also shadows human culture, providing an outlet for fears around women's power, desire, and sexuality. As storytelling has shifted from oral traditions to cinematic portrayals, the she-wolf has been left to the sidelines. This paper seeks to explore how the Ginger Snaps trilogy (2000–2004) reset this imbalance, providing three distinct narratives centered on the female werewolf, intertwining the stories of the Fitzgerald sisters and their lycanthropic transformation. This trilogy served to reinvent the stereotype of the werewolf, using traditional lycanthropic tropes to explore issues of feminine monstrosity, the painful transitory period of adolescence, and enduring social anxieties under patriarchal societies. This paper argues that the Ginger Snaps trilogy is an integral set of texts for understanding how the werewolf motif has transitioned into contemporary society and how it continues to act as a release point for wider social anxieties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marie de France's lai of Bisclavret is a medieval narrative of metamorphosis that invites commentary due to its complexity and numerous intertextual references. The same term bisclavret is ambiguous, distinguishing the protagonist from other werewolves because he was born a wolf, without enchantments. This study explores an intertextual relationship with Apuleius's The Golden Ass and with the classical tradition, from Herodotus to Plauto and Petronius in order to study the meaning and the use of words as versipellis and denaso. In particular, the wolf's revenge in the lai, which involves tearing off his treacherous wife's nose, echoes the story of Teliphron in The Golden Ass.

The wolf has stalked human society for centuries, becoming a figure of fear and reverence. It is unsurprising that such a figure would infiltrate culture via folklore, myth, and legend, most notably in the form of the werewolf. A review of historical references reveals that the figure of the ‘she-wolf’ also shadows human culture, providing an outlet for fears around women’s power, desire, and sexuality. As storytelling has shifted from oral traditions to cinematic portrayals, the she-wolf has been left to the sidelines. This paper seeks to explore how the Ginger Snaps trilogy (2000–2004) reset this imbalance, providing three distinct narratives centered on the female werewolf, intertwining the stories of the Fitzgerald sisters and their lycanthropic transformation. This trilogy served to reinvent the stereotype of the werewolf, using traditional lycanthropic tropes to explore issues of feminine monstrosity, the painful transitory period of adolescence, and enduring social anxieties under patriarchal societies. This paper argues that the Ginger Snaps trilogy is an integral set of texts for understanding how the werewolf motif has transitioned into contemporary society and how it continues to act as a release point for wider social anxieties.

Copyright of Secuencia: Revista de Historia y Ciencias Sociales is the property of Instituto de Investigaciones - Dr. Jose M. Luis Mora and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Music videos of the MTV era often use gothic visual signifiers as decorative elements or creative expressions of the musician's star persona or latest record. But several video clips from the early 1980s adapt the figure of gothic monstrosity, and in particular, the images and stories of the undead or beastly Other, in ways that dramatize the music video's evolving aesthetic, commercial, and technological character and its unpredictable relation to Gothic. In this article, I look closely at the narrative elements of two important configurations of gothic-themed video clips: "Don't Go" (1982) by Yazoo, "Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair)" (1983) by Sheena Easton, and "Mary Jane's Last Dance" (1993) by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which creatively adapt textual elements of Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein and its various film adaptations and parodies and its cultural significance in the modern Western imaginary; and "Thriller" (1983) by Michael Jackson and "Heads Will Roll" (2009) by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which likewise adapt and reimagine aspects of John Landis's 1981 horror comedy film An American Werewolf in London and its afterlife in the modern media ecosystem. These videos, I argue, trouble conventional understandings of the practice of adaptation as a one-to-one line of inheritance between source material and destination text. In so doing, furthermore, these clips amplify and elaborate certain socio-cultural anxieties about gender and race, personal and professional identity and autonomy, and technological innovation and automation that animate their source materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the case of a patient diagnosed with Huntington's disease (HD), who, following a two-year history of anxiety with obsessional preoccupations, developed psychosis with clinical lycanthropy: a prominent delusional idea that he was a werewolf. Although there was no benefit from various antidepressants and antipsychotics, there was remarkable improvement of his symptoms following prescription of Clozapine. His choreiform movement disorder also improved as his mental state settled. Although some reported cases of clinical lycanthropy are related to neurological conditions, this is the first case in a patient with HD. We also discuss the relevance of cultural and personal factors in the expression of a delusion that incorporates disgust, and the potential role of somatosensory aberrations and misidentification of self. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Acta Universitatis Lodziensis. Folia Litteraria Polonica is the property of Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Lodzkiego and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

We describe the case of a patient diagnosed with Huntington's disease (HD), who, following a two-year history of anxiety with obsessional preoccupations, developed psychosis with clinical lycanthropy: a prominent delusional idea that he was a werewolf. Although there was no benefit from various antidepressants and antipsychotics, there was remarkable improvement of his symptoms following prescription of Clozapine. His choreiform movement disorder also improved as his mental state settled. Although some reported cases of clinical lycanthropy are related to neurological conditions, this is the first case in a patient with HD. We also discuss the relevance of cultural and personal factors in the expression of a delusion that incorporates disgust, and the potential role of somatosensory aberrations and misidentification of self.

The article gives a short overview of the Estonian werewolf tradition in the 16th and 17th centuries and a glimpse into the 19th–20th-century werewolf beliefs. The image of werewolf of the earlier and later periods is compared. The differences between the images of these two periods are explained with the help of the approaches of Tim Ingold and Philipp Descola, which ground the changes in the worldview taking place together with the shift from the pre-modern society into modernity. The mental world of the 16th–17th-century Estonian and Livonian peasant did not encompass the category of nature, and the borders between the human being and the animal on the one side and organism and environment on the other side were not so rigid as they are in today’s people’s comprehension of the world. The ability to change into a wolf was seen as an added possibility of acquiring new experiences and benefits. As the popular ontology had changed by the second half of the 19th century – the human mind was raised into the ultimate position and the animal was comprehended as being inferior – the transformation of a man into an animal, if it was seriously taken at all, seemed to be strange and unnatural.

Music videos of the MTV era often use gothic visual signifiers as decorative elements or creative expressions of the musician’s star persona or latest record. But several video clips from the early 1980s adapt the figure of gothic monstrosity, and in particular, the images and stories of the undead or beastly Other, in ways that dramatize the music video’s evolving aesthetic, commercial, and technological character and its unpredictable relation to Gothic. In this article, I look closely at the narrative elements of two important configurations of gothic-themed video clips: “Don’t Go” (1982) by Yazoo, “Telefone (Long Distance Love Affair)” (1983) by Sheena Easton, and “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” (1993) by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, which creatively adapt textual elements of Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein and its various film adaptations and parodies and its cultural significance in the modern Western imaginary; and “Thriller” (1983) by Michael Jackson and “Heads Will Roll” (2009) by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which likewise adapt and reimagine aspects of John Landis’s 1981 horror comedy film An American Werewolf in London and its afterlife in the modern media ecosystem. These videos, I argue, trouble conventional understandings of the practice of adaptation as a one-to-one line of inheritance between source material and destination text. In so doing, furthermore, these clips amplify and elaborate certain socio-cultural anxieties about gender and race, personal and professional identity and autonomy, and technological innovation and automation that animate their source materials.

Abstract. The archetypal fear of the other and the idea that it is safer to hold on to the familiar are the central topics discussed in one of the best plays in Estonian literature Libahunt (The Werewolf, 1912) by August Kitzberg (1855– 1927). Although the play was written at the beginning of the 20th century, it is still open to interpretation and has not lost its relevance. It is a play about conflict between values: the Tammaru family is conservative and afraid of strangers, of foreign blood, while one of their foster children Tiina is a free spirit whose appearance and nature is different from the family. She is not one of the villagers, she is an outsider and the family and the villagers are afraid of her. This stranger is seen as mysterious and dangerous – she is said to be a werewolf – and the xenophobic village casts her out. Using imagology as a theoretical basis, the article concentrates on the aspect of the foreigner and on fear of the other.

This article examines the recent literary form of mash-up novels by comparing the German mash-up Werther, der Werwolf (2010) to its original Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. In both novels, the protagonist Werther is conceptualised as an antihero. In Goethe's original, Werther's existential failure is a result of his mental condition and inability to integrate into the bourgeois society; in the mash-up he fails because he struggles with his metamorphosis into a werewolf. In both cases, Werther's obsessive love for a girl called Lotte aggravates the underlying conflict. This article aims to demonstrate the extent to which the antiheroic qualities of Goethe's Werther are reflected in the mash-up character Werewolf-Werther, and to highlight to what extent the figure of the werewolf is an apt and contemporary metaphor for Werther's story. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Culture can affect psychiatric disorders. Clinical Lycanthropy is a rare syndrome, described since Antiquity, within which the patient has the delusional belief of turning into a wolf. Little is known on its clinical or therapeutic correlates. Methods: We conducted a systematic review (PRISMA) on PubMed and Google Scholar, until January 2021. Case reports, data on neurobiological hypotheses, and cultural aspects were included. Language was not restricted to English. Results: Forty-three cases of clinical lycanthropy and kynanthropy (delusion of dog transformation) were identified. Associated diagnoses were: schizophrenia, psychotic depression, bipolar disorder, and other psychotic disorders. Antipsychotic medication may be an efficient treatment for this rare transnosographic syndrome. In case of depression or mania, the treatment included antidepressants or mood regulators. The neuroscientific hypotheses include the conception of clinical lycanthropy as a cenesthopathy, as a delusional misidentification of the self-syndrome, as impairments of sensory integration, as impairments of the belief evaluation system, and right hemisphere anomalies. Interestingly, there is a clinical overlap between clinical lycanthropy and other delusional misidentification syndromes. Clinical lycanthropy may be a culture-bound syndrome that happens in the context of Western cultures, myths, and stories on werewolves, and today's exposure to these narratives on cultural media such as the internet and the series. We suggest the necessity of a cultural approach for these patients' clinical assessment, and a narrative and patient-centered care. Conclusions: Psychiatric transtheoretical reflections are needed for complementaristic neurobiological and cultural approaches of complex delusional syndromes such as clinical lycanthropy. Future research should include integrative frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article analyzes the image of the wolf in “The Song of Igor's Campaign” and ancient Chinese literature. In the motive complex of artistic animalism of “The Song” the wolf is represented semantically multivalued. He acts as a symbolic function of the forerunner of tragic events, poeticizes as a legendary mythological werewolf, and is also intensively used as a comparison-personification. In ancient Chinese literature the wolf in the vast majority of texts acts as a carrier of negative emotions. Its main metaphorical associations are alien invaders, rebels, sovereigns-tyrants. The image of the wolf is investigated according to the original text of “The Song” and the translations and commentaries of Chinese literary scholars Wei Huangnu and Li Xiyin.

The paper deals with the issue of burial of revenants, which in current ideas merges more with the listing of various antivampire rituals. At the heart of the debate is the grave of an alleged werewolf in the area of Livonia (today’s Latvia), and a comparison with the execution of an alleged werewolf, Peter Stumpp, near Cologne.

The archetypal fear of the other and the idea that it is safer to hold on to the familiar are the central topics discussed in one of the best plays in Estonian literature Libahunt (The Werewolf, 1912) by August Kitzberg (1855-1927). Although the play was written at the beginning of the 20th century, it is still open to interpretation and has not lost its relevance. It is a play about conflict between values: the Tammaru family is conservative and afraid of strangers, of foreign blood, while one of their foster children Tiina is a free spirit whose appearance and nature is different from the family. She is not one of the villagers, she is an outsider and the family and the villagers are afraid of her. This stranger is seen as mysterious and dangerous - she is said to be a werewolf - and the xenophobic village casts her out. Using imagology as a theoretical basis, the article concentrates on the aspect of the foreigner and on fear of the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Maetagused is the property of Estonian Literary Museum, Department of Folkloristics and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Difference, as a critical concept, has been long disputed among philosophers from the early days of Plato down to the contemporary critics including Gilles Deleuze. At first, the exploration of difference was based on the subsequent definition of Form and Identity. Forms could be uniform, similar, or different. In philosophical terms, identity is a relation between two forms while the two forms have only a unique Immanence, and any alteration would cause a difference. The present paper investigates Stephenie Meyer’s Gothic novels, Twilight Sagas, particularly Twilight and New Moon, in terms of the Deleuzean concept of Difference which was developed in his later work Difference and Repetition. In Gothic texts, vampires and werewolves are depicted as terrifying creatures, the beings to be loathed and run away from. In Meyer’s novels these specimen are depicted otherwise. The protagonist’s reaction towards these devilish beings is not expected from a human being. According to the Deleuzean definition of Difference, each notion merely contains one implication to itself; therefore, differences provided in a conception give it a novel identity. The changes in the Gothic creatures are thus examined through the exploration of Gothic concepts of vampires and werewolves in Meyer’s novels, in light of Deleuzean Difference. The investigation of Twilight and New Moon demonstrates numerous dissimilarities at work between the previous characteristics of vampires and werewolves defined in Gothic texts and those presented in the novels under exploration.

The Antología de la literatura fantástica by Borges, Ocampo and Bioy Casares, a work that marked a milestone in the history of the fantasy genre in Argentina due to its great influence, delights us with a series of stories - tales, fragments of novels, plays, fables, etc. - that includes a single text from Greco-Roman antiquity: the encounter with the werewolf narrated by Niceros during the dinner with Trimalchio in Petronius' Satyricon. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly, to demonstrate that the translation of Petronius' text is based on Tomás Meabe's version, which, in turn, is based on the French translation of Charles Heguin de Guerle, published in 1862. Secondly, to analyze the different ways in which the anthologists manipulated Meabe's version in order to highlight the fantastic aspects of Petronius' tale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ginger Snaps (2000) has been recognised as a significant example of feminist horror. This article analyses the final film in the trilogy, Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning (2004). On first appearance, Ginger Snaps Back reacts to the ending of the first film, in which Brigitte kills her lupine sister Ginger. Set in the nineteenth century, the film draws on Canadian Gothic tropes with the two sisters trapped in an isolated fort, surrounded by frozen forest. In doing so, it echoes another Canadian werewolf narrative, Henry Beaugrand's 'The Werwolves' (1898). Beaugrand's story opens with a group of settler-colonisers spending the Christmas period in Fort Richelieu, Quebec. This location evokes North American fears, and the representation of the wooded wilderness as full of wild beasts and wild men. Beaugrand collapses the 'wild beasts' and 'wild men' into one hybrid monster. By comparing the depiction of werewolves in Ginger Snaps Back and Beaugrand's story, this article uncovers the implications of ignoring and appropriating Native Canadian folklore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Laurell Hamilton in her “Anita Blake: Vampire Hunter Series” portrays a large community of monstrous creatures that populate a violent near-future American landscape. A number of critics have already explored the forms in which Anita, the leading heroine, emerges in the 1990s literary scene as a strong figure who challenges traditional narratives of female subordination and alters predictable romantic entanglements with the male protagonists (Crawford 2014; Veldman-Genz 2011; Siegel 2007; Holland-Toll 2004). Moving beyond this approach that centres on Anita, this paper explores the forms in which the author designs her male companions and lovers. Her choice of lovers suggests that there are multiple desires at play inHamilton’s popular fiction in relation to masculinity in the context of a heterosexual erotica. Following a methodological approach of cultural studies (Saukko 2003), this study seeks to illustrate how conflicting desires, emblemized by her plurality of lovers, represent a literary effect of paradoxical yearnings at play in contemporary white, middle-class American women’s lives.

Being Human was a British television series broadcast by BBC Three between 2008 and 2013. Its main characters are a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf, who live together and try to lead a normal life among humans; however, their integration into society is a constant struggle. Since Being Human is centred on inclusion, exclusion and belonging, the story evokes real-life situations of marginalisation; following Lampert-Weissig’s suggestion about the relevance of the characters’ ethnicity (an Irish, a Jewish and a mixed-race person), which makes them “double outsiders” (65), my essay proposes an analysis of the three main characters in seasons 1-3 of Being Human as tropes for ethnic outsiders, migrants and asylum seekers in the UK. I will first consider each character individually, because each one of the three tropes (werewolf, vampire, ghost) has its own history and evolution in folklore, literature and cinema and, therefore, each one of the three protagonists is particularly suited for introducing different perspectives on foreignness and marginalisation. I will then discuss how Being Human addresses the issue of social exclusion and how the show’s final message, while progressive at first sight, is actually problematic and ambiguous.

Victor Olegovich Pelevin undoubtedly belongs to the most popular contemporary Russian writers. He is recognized as one of the leading representatives of Russian postmodernism. The purpose of this article is to show distinguishing features and characteristics of Pelevin’s “non-human beings”: at first to discuss Pelevin’s “postmodernist and eclectic” conception of “supernatural creatures”: werewolves and vampires (Pelevin deconstructs “werewolf and vampire discourses”), and secondly, to show Pelevin’s point of view on human–robot relationships. The following Pelevin’s novels are the subject of the analysis in this paper: The Sacred Book of the Werewolf (2004), Empire “V”. The Story of a Real Superman (2006), S.N.U.F.F. (2011), Batman Apollo (2013).

Being Human was a British television series broadcast by BBC Three between 2008 and 2013. Its main characters are a ghost, a vampire and a werewolf, who live together and try to lead a normal life among humans; however, their integration into society is a constant struggle. Since Being Human is centred on inclusion, exclusion and belonging, the story evokes real-life situations of marginalisation; following Lampert-Weissig's suggestion about the relevance of the characters' ethnicity (an Irish, a Jewish and a mixed-race person), which makes them "double outsiders" (65), my essay proposes an analysis of the three main characters in seasons 1-3 of Being Human as tropes for ethnic outsiders, migrants and asylum seekers in the UK. I will first consider each character individually, because each one of the three tropes (werewolf, vampire, ghost) has its own history and evolution in folklore, literature and cinema and, therefore, each one of the three protagonists is particularly suited for introducing different perspectives on foreignness and marginalisation. I will then discuss how Being Human addresses the issue of social exclusion and how the show's final message, while progressive at first sight, is actually problematic and ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper focuses on a particular legend about a wrestling match between a human and a dead werewolf, which I recorded during my fieldwork in the Croat (i.e. Catholic) community in Herzegovina in 2017. Based on the analysis of a legend about a wrestling match between a human of Catholic faith and a Muslim werewolf, I aim to show how latent inter-ethnic and inter-religious tensions in multi-ethnic and multi-religious Bosnia and Herzegovina are reflected in this legend about the restless dead. I pay particular attention to how the ethnic and religious Other is constructed in the legend, and demonstrate the prejudices against the religious and ethnic Others that are reflected in it. I argue that its main function was, and still is, first and foremost to emphasise the superiority of the narrator's religion, i.e. Catholicism, over Islam, and to serve as a warning to Catholics against abandoning their faith and converting to another religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Gothic monsters have recently experienced a period of focused scholarly analysis, although few studies have engaged with the werewolf in terms of its overt alignment with masculinity. Yet the werewolves of young adult fantasy fiction both support and subvert dominant masculine discourses through their complex negotiation with emotional repression and violence. These performative masculine practices are the focus of this article, which analyses how hegemonic masculine ideals are reinforced or rejected in a corpus of young adult fantasy texts, including Cassandra Clare's young adult series The Mortal Instruments (2007–2014) and Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Saga (2005–2010). Both texts feature masculine characters whose lycanthropic experiences implicitly comment upon gender norms, which may shape young adult audiences' understanding of their own and others' gender identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a key trope within much contemporary paranormal romance: the absence, or ineffectiveness, of the father. The first part of the essay develops an analysis of this aspect of the genre (in the Twilight Saga especially) through the work of René Girard, Luce Irigaray, and Juliet MacCannell. Of particular importance here is the extent to which Twilight and similar narratives stage female self-sacrifice as a pre-condition for the redemption of the hero and the restoration of patriarchal bonds initially compromised by some crisis in the effective functioning of paternal authority. The second section extends this analysis to consider ways in which paranormal romances featuring werewolves and vampires shift away from this conservative and reductivist romance paradigm so as to affirm and contest heteronormative, paternalistic models of masculinity and sexual desire. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

British folklore reveals a history of werewolf sightings in places where there were once wolves. I draw on theories of the weird and the eerie and on the turbulence of England in the era of late capitalism in my analysis of the representation of werewolves in contemporary urban myths. Werewolves are deliberately excluded from Mark Fisher's notion of the 'weird', because they behave in a manner that is entirely expected of them. I contradict this by interrogating the werewolf as spectre wolf, bringing it within the realms of the weird. In examining the Hull Werewolf, I put forward the suggestion that he represents not only our belief in him as a wolf phantom, but our collective guilt at the extinction of an entire indigenous species of wolf. Viewed in this way, he can reawaken the memory of what humans did to wolves, and redeem the Big Bad Wolf of our childhood nightmares. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While in-depth cultural histories have been devoted to such horror monsters as the vampire, the zombie and Frankenstein's monster, the cinematic werewolf has long been considered little more than a Freudian allegory for the dark side of man. Accepted thinking on horror cinema would have it that countercultural 'New Horror' films such as Night of the Living Dead (Romero, 1968), The Last House on the Left (Craven, 1972) and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (Hooper, 1974) marked a turning point, proving beyond doubt that the horror film could be a site for social, cultural and political debate. Yet, while a few examples have been given scholarly attention outside of psychoanalytic discourse, the werewolf film is still considered to have little cultural resonance and continues to be framed in the context of 'the beast within'. This article argues that, while this term has been historically important in establishing the werewolf as a topic for scholarly study, its continued dominance prevents us from engaging with the werewolf as a complex and mutating cultural metaphor. By providing cultural readings of Werewolves on Wheels (Levesque, 1971), The Boy Who Cried Werewolf (Juran, 1973) and The Werewolf of Washington (Ginsberg, 1973) – three films that share their thematic preoccupations with the New Horror movement – it illustrates that the werewolf is just as versatile as our other popular monsters and should be considered not just in the context of the psychoanalytic 'beast within' but the cultural 'beast without'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the story told by Rutilio about his aerial journey and killing of the witch / female werewolf (Persiles I.8). In particular, it focuses on the gender of this female werewolf and her possible relation to the Malleus maleficarum by Henricus Institoris and Jacobus Sprenger (1486-7). This interpretation traces connections with another Cervantine witch / enchantress, Cañizares in the Coloquio de los perros and shows a recurring authorial obsession with the perennial mystery of free will. For postmodern cultural critics, this episode also presents an unparalleled opportunity to deconstruct the human / animal binary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Twilight Saga novels (2005-2010) by Stephenie Meyer have rejuvenated the popularity and interest in the modern day vampire and have also ensured a certain renaissance for his werewolf counterpart. As a result, the werewolf characters of this multi-volume, multi-format vampire story have become as wellknown and as popular as their revenant rivals. It is for this reason that this paper will concentrate on the dual figure of the werewolf as represented in the Twilight series of Young Adult novels using Michael Lundblad’s discourse of the jungle from his book The Birth of a Jungle: Animality in Progressive-Era U.S. Literature and Culture (2013). Lundblad’s theoretical methodology is based in animality studies and uses Freudian-Darwinism from the turn of the century to interpret representations of animals and animality as featured in literary texts. He pays particular attention to the figure of the wolf and his readings of this creature both as a “real” animal and as a metaphor for human masculinity will be used in this paper to shed light upon the pack of werewolves in the Twilight Saga. In a discussion of the animalised traits of the wolf-men in human form and the humanity in the wolves in animal form, this paper will seek to question the blurring of the beast/human divide of these post-humans and to investigate Meyerist hyper masculinity in this gendered teen body.

The image of the werewolf, whose roots can be found in Pline’s or Petronius’ tales of metamorphosis, undergoes an intriguing reinterpretation in the Baroque era under the name of “lycanthrope”. This new figure of the werewolf does not belong to the realm of magic or witchcraft – its metamorphosis, that is no more physical, but psychological, is explained by medicine and science. In the writings of Cervantes, Burton, and especially Webster, this half-human and half-wolf figure transcends its mythical and demonic werewolf ancestors.

In this article are presented and analysed local legends and myths about the supernatural being the Psoglavec (dogheaded/ Cynocephalus), the Werewolf, the Wolf Herdsman and Attila which survived in Ribnica, Slovenia and its surroundings. The name Psoglavec (dog-headed) is used as an insult for the inhabitants of the Sodražica community even today. These traditions have their roots in local myths, which are reflected in the mythological landscape. Different layers of myth with similar notions point towards a belief concept about the Wolf Herdsman, which was contaminated with other supernatural beings and historical figure of Attila.

The paper deals with the issue of burial of revenants, which in current ideas merges more with the listing of various antivampire rituals. At the heart of the debate is the grave of an alleged werewolf in the area of Livonia (today's Latvia), and a comparison with the execution of an alleged werewolf, Peter Stumpp, near Cologne. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article describes the figures of a beast appearing in selected literary works against the background of the historical eras in which they were created. This makes it possible to analyse the symbolic layer of cultural topoi and thus identify the figure of the other depicted in such a monstrous manner that he becomes an inhumane phantom. Indicating the link between social reality and the fiction of the works of culture it creates makes it possible to explore the mechanisms of exclusion - which are guided by fear of the unknown, on the one hand, and allow self- -identification and gaining collective identity through opposition to what is monstrous, on the other hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]