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2 THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
to this interpretation, which remained the dominant explanation for
lycanthropy into the nineteenth century.
Nineteenth-century scholars’ commitment to the principles of scientific
inquiry led to other ‘rational’ explanations of the phenomenon;
it was argued that belief in the werewolf is a superstition originating
in such sources as the crimes of sociopaths, an atavistic craving for
blood or human flesh, or new mythological patterns brought about
by mistaken word associations (the ‘disease’ of language studied by
comparative mythologists). Western scholars working in the emergent
‘science’ of anthropology also revealed that belief in the transformation
of humans into wolves has animated the traditions of Native Americans,
who have long coexisted with wolves. This led to speculation that the
myth had evolved from the practice of donning animal skins to hunt,
fight or dance. With the resurgence of interest in the occult signalled
by the popularity of spiritualism in the mid- to late nineteenth century,
the werewolf was even explained as an actual manifestation resulting
from an individual’s mesmeric projection of an astral body.
Most of these perspectives were incorporated into the representations
of the werewolf that appeared in the Gothic fiction of the
nineteenth century, especially that of the fin de siècle, and in the
twentieth century such representations were elaborated in fiction and
film, primarily in the genre of horror, but also in the genre of fantasy.
Since the mid-nineteenth century, the various manifestations of the
werewolf theme in mythology, folklore, historical records, anthropological
and ethnographic accounts, medical and psychiatric records,
literature and film have also been periodically collated and analysed
in books and articles by both popular and academic authors.
Regardless of genre, material relating to the werewolf in every
period has been informed by prevailing cultural values and dominant
ways of knowing or speaking about the world. In this sense, texts about
werewolves can be read as indices of the way in which ‘reality’ has been
assessed, described and constructed at different moments in history.
Indeed, the idea that reality is ‘posited’ and can therefore be contested
and revised through rational argumentation was a key bequest of the
Enlightenment, a theme that Chapter 1 explores in relation to the