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This episode we celebrate our one-year anniversary on Halloween, with the tale of a mistreated werewolf: the Lai of Bisclavret by Marie de France.
This week’s text:
- “The Lay of the Werewolf” in French Mediaeval Romances from the Lays of Marie de France. Trans. Eugene Mason. 1911. Project Gutenberg.
References:
- Bynum, Caroline Walker. “Metamorphosis, or Gerald and the Werewolf.” Speculum 73.4 (Oct. 1998): 987-1013. JSTOR.
- Trębicki, Grzegorz. “Supragenological Types of Fiction versus Contemporary Non-Mimetic Literature.” Science Fiction Studies 41.3 (Nov. 2014): 481-501. JSTOR.
- TV Tropes: “Not Using the Z Word“
- TV Tropes: “Genre Blindness“
- Translation of the Canon Episcopi by H.C. Lea, reprinted in: Levack, Brian P., ed. The Witchcraft Sourcebook. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 2015. 36-37.
Image: Illumination from “Ysengrin et les anguilles” from MS at Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. (Yes, those are technically foxes, but I think they look enough like zombie werewolves to fit today’s episode!)
It seems to me that the werewolf syndrome depicted here is an allegory, or even a euphemism, for something like ‘going caveman’, where the Lord rejects his clothes and status and indeed his humanity and lives “as a beast” (as meaning like). Perhaps bisclevret was a serial murderer and rapist, a “wolf of a man”?