how is werewolf formed?

[lunabee34]

I got the most amazing package from executrix. Thank you so much. *hugs* Every single book in this box is something I want to read. :)

I finished Trigger Warnings. I didn't like it as well as Gaiman's other short story collections. The Sherlock Holmes piece was exceptional, and a couple other stories were very good but I was pretty take it or leave it on the collection as a whole. He included a fair amount of poetry in the collection, most of which I didn't care for, but one poem about a witch was wonderfully done. Glad to have read it, but nothing to re-read.

I've blown through Uprooted in the past couple days and will be able to post a review of that soon.

I want to read some very, very sad fic. Anybody have recs for tearjerkers? Any fandom or pairing, but I would be especially grateful for newish HP recs.

I keep thinking I am going to make some awesome meta-tastic post about Penny Dreadful or Game of Thrones and then not doing it, so here's the truncated version:

Game of Thrones: damn you, show, for making me root for Cersei. Show!Sparrow seems scheming and cruel in a way the book version didn't, and I couldn't help wanting her to get her revenge against him and those awful nuns. Please, please, don't be dead Jon Snow. I think probably that he's dead and Melisandre will resurrect him. Tyrion, Missandei and Greyworm ruling Mereen is kinda made of awesome. Jaime is going to raze Dorne to the ground. *hugs him hard* And Bronn still lives! Yay!

Penny Dreadful: what an uneven season. Some of my favorite moments of the whole show are from this season and yet it doesn't form the same cohesive whole as the first season. Dorian's story arc with Angelique was incomprehensible to me and completely divorced from the rest of the show. I love Brona's reveal that she's known about her origins the whole time and that she's going to be the big bad in the next season. Dorian was finally interesting in these last two episodes with her. I love that John Clare has decided that he doesn't want to kill Victor or set London on fire with Brona and I adore that he asked Vanessa to go with him. I equally adore that she would have gone with him if she didn't genuinely believe she's bad for him. When Vanessa told the devil, "Beloved, meet your master" and fucking destroyed that sucker, I may have squealed at the television in unholy glee. That moment was the money shot, my friends. I am less enthused that Sembene is dead; that was unnecessary and horrible, and I am convinced that on route to Africa, he is going to turn into a werewolf and not be dead at all. I loved poor, brave Ethan going to his death and instead being tricked into returning home. I just can't imagine the mechanism that will reunite them all in the next season. Looking forward to it, though.

Speaking of Victorian horror, I know that werewolf (and other skin-changer) stories already existed in folk tales and fairy tales, but is there a nineteenth-century novel that popularized the werewolf the way Dracula did for vampires? I suppose that The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is a kind of werewolf story, but not really what I'm talking about. Did werewolves really only enter the literary public consciousness in the 20th century? Is there a seminal werewolf novel (trying to think of one and failing), or does our pop culture sense of werewolves stem entirely from film?

Comments

[heliopausa]

Not sure how popular it was, but there's The Werewolf, 1896, by Clemence Housman (sister of the poet of The Shropshire Lad, which also has its incidental uncanny moments).

[kore]

Oh, Clemence! I love her. //random drive-by Housman family love

[lunabee34]

I don't know anything about the Housmans. I'm assuming the brother is A.E.

Tell me why they're awesome.

*chin hands*

[executrix]

Chinhands is very appropriate for werewolves! Because I had one year of college German millenia ago, and we had a little poem about a werewolf who put his chin on his paws and said "Beute mich!" (Construe me!) and I remember "den Wenwolf, gibt'es Singular," which made him sad, because "er hatte doch ein Weib und Kind!"

[lunabee34]

So somebody needs to make a Teen Wolf icon that says Construe me! LOL

[lunabee34]

Cool; thank you. I will check that out. I bet there's a PDF on internet archive.

[kore]

At least Trigger Warnings didn't have the NARNIA BESTIALITY PORN in it. //grim

[lunabee34]

Is that "The Problem of Susan?" Because I remember really enjoying that one and don't remember any bestiality porn.

[executrix]

Hey, wait, I have one! In the Duchess of Malfi, her brother's shrink doctor says that Ferdinand has "lycanthropia" like he expects everybody to know what he means. And then says that some wolves have their fur on the inside. Probably it's just that he went off the deep end and THINKS he's a werewolf (although it's not a good sign that he's wandering around town schlepping a human leg) but again, it must have been culturally available to have a delusion about it.

[kore]

OH, good one! He's getting that from Burton, right? https://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/b/burton/robert/melancholy/S1.1.1.html

Lycanthropia, which Avicenna calls cucubuth, others lupinam insaniam, or wolf-madness, when men run howling about graves and fields in the night, and will not be persuaded but that they are wolves, or some such beasts. 901Aetius and 902Paulus call it a kind of melancholy; but I should rather refer it to madness, as most do. Some make a doubt of it whether there be any such disease. 903Donat ab Altomari saith, that he saw two of them in his time: 904Wierus tells a story of such a one at Padua 1541, that would not believe to the contrary, but that he was a wolf. He hath another instance of a Spaniard, who thought himself a bear; 905Forrestus confirms as much by many examples; one amongst the rest of which he was an eyewitness, at Alcmaer in Holland, a poor husbandman that still hunted about graves, and kept in churchyards, of a pale, black, ugly, and fearful look.

That sounds more like "sick people who think they're werewolves," though, not a 19th-century novel, right. Hmmm.....I really just can't think of anything from that era. Weird.

[lunabee34]

Oh how cool. Thanks for linking.

I looked on wikipedia and there are a handful of Victorian novels plus a few medieval and earlier texts. It seems that the 20th century is really the heyday of werewolf stuff though and primarily in film.

I think it's weird that there wasn't a hugely popular Victorian novel.

[archersangel]

I think it's weird that there wasn't a hugely popular Victorian novel.

i think vampires were more popular at the time because of the erotic sub-text & the victorian age was such a suppressed culture. werewolves probably got more popular during the age of film because of what make-up & special effects could do for the story.

(Black) Mass Media?

[executrix]

I also think that, although "Dracula" was a popular novel, it was really the theatrical version that made Dracula a cultural icon.

Re: (Black) Mass Media?

[lunabee34]

I do forget that, and I shouldn't. They turned every damn thing into a play didn't they? I've read about some of the theatrical adaptations of popular novels but I don't know anything about the Dracula one. Did they get a hottie to play Drac?

Re: (Black) Mass Media?

[executrix]

In cities with weekly rep, and in towns that were visited by touring companies (remember, even tiny towns had an Opry House) people went to the theater the way they used to go to the movies, more or less irrespective of what was playing, and the way people now flip the channels or DVR equivalent. So a) there was a huge demand for almost ANY kind of entertainment, and b) before international copyright there was a tremendous incentive to turn books from other countries into plays. And of course Dickens was constantly bedeviled by extremely unauthorized adaptations--sometimes before he even finished the novel in question. And of course the Tom Show is a genre of its own. Do you remember Nicholas Nickleby's gig with the Crummles Theatrical Co? His first assignment was to plagiarize a French play the Crummles had a copy of, but with the addition of the two tubs and a pump that the company had recently acquired and needed to amortize.

There is a whole *book* about the Balderston version of Dracula, although I can't remember the author or exact title--but David Skal wrote a bunch about the play. In an actor-manager company, Dracula was probably played by the boss!--otherwise, the Heavy Man. BTW when Paul Darrow (B7's Avon) was in weekly rep, he played Dracula at least once.

If you ever want a readable quick guide to Everything You Need to Know About Victorian Theatre, Robertson Davies was a big fan-- try The Mirror of Nature.

Re: (Black) Mass Media?

[lunabee34]

Thanks for the link to good sources.

I am now imagining Paul Darrow as Dracula. It's a Good Thing.

At least one of the books you just sent me is about Victorian theater, so maybe there's something there about Dracula.

Re: (Black) Mass Media?

[cloudsinvenice]

I was just coming here to recommend David J. Skal's Hollywood Gothic re: the stage/screen adaptations of Dracula. :)

Re: (Black) Mass Media?

[lunabee34]

I love that my friends know stuff! :)

[lunabee34]

That makes sense.

[lunabee34]

I consulted the wikipedia and it was apparently written about as early as ancient Greece, so definitely part of the cultural consciousness to some degree.

I feel like Fur on the Inside is a good band name or novel title.

[justhuman]

Teary Fic rec

Freedom's Just Another Word For Nothing Left To Lose
by synecdochic
SGA
Rodney/John *whimper" sort of *whimper* yes, it is

[lunabee34]

Thank you!!!!!!!!

I shall prepare to weep.

[cloudsinvenice]

Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf by George W. M. Reynolds is the only thing I can think of - or at least, I *think* it's the one I've heard namechecked alongside Clemence Housman's book; it's the only title that rings a bell on Wikipedia's page on werewolf fiction. It's on Gutenberg if you fancy reading it! And I can highly recommend a book called The Beast Within by Adam Douglas (it's had various subtitles in different editions, apparently), which traces the werewolf through folklore and fiction down the centuries. I particularly remember that there was an ancient Roman belief that a werewolf would transform by removing his clothes (I forget whether it had to be at the full moon) and peeing in a circle around them. They would turn to stone, presumably to protect them from being taken while he was off being a wolf...

I'm with you on GoT, particularly the idea of those three trying to sort out Mereen - I got frustrated with the lengthy build-up to (what will presumably be) the meeting of Dany and Tyrion in the books, so it was a relief when they fast-forwarded that bit for the show.

[lunabee34]

I should have realized there would be a werewolf idea in ancient Rome given Romulus and Remus's origins. *headdesk*

I have grown frustrated with the length build up of many things in the GoT books, but that is certainly one of the worst offenders. LOL