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136 THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
been constructed in modernity, through the active and self-conscious
disruption of such strategies.
The resulting ‘“Fantastic/Fantasy” disarray’ (as Neil Cornwell terms
it) 25 effectively ‘disappeared’ considerations of popular fantasy under
a mountain of turgid scholarship. The resulting dearth of critical
frameworks for analysing fantasy as a distinct genre with its own social,
historical, political and economic imperatives has recently become
abundantly clear in the wake of Peter Jackson’s cinematic adaptation
of The Lord of the Rings, with publishers and scholars now scrabbling
to produce long-overdue work that contextualizes this phenomenon.
But, as scholarship that explores alternative ways of being and knowing
can demonstrate, the critical neglect of fantasy has also limited
theoretical engagements with the speculative dimensions of such fiction.
The cyborg and the Gothic monster have staked their claims to
a ‘postmodern’ or ‘progressive’ subjectivity; but how can the fantasy
werewolf contribute to speculative theory about the future of being
and knowing? Indeed, on what grounds is the werewolf in fantasy (as
opposed to the werewolf in Gothic horror) to be understood?
The most obvious point of departure for such an investigation is
the scant body of literature that has, despite confusions of terminology,
maintained a focus upon popular fantasy. 26 These studies have
collectively argued that the use of magic, the pursuit of a quest, and
the elaboration of an alternative world are all generic features of
fantasy. Certainly, a number of narratives about lycanthropy belong to
this tradition; Poul Anderson’s Three Hearts and Three Lions (1953)
and Christopher Stasheff’s Her Majesty’s Wizard (1986), for example,
place werewolves as secondary characters on quests in alternative
worlds. Yet, the werewolf of such fantasy is often virtually indistinguishable
from the werewolf of horror, with the lycanthrope in Her
Majesty’s Wizard, for example, describing his experiences in wolf
form in terms reminiscent of the Wolf Man: ‘When I am wolf, there
is nothing left of conscience, pity, or remorse left within me. All
that’s left are appetites.’ 27 The representation of the werewolf in J.K.
Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (1999) follows
similar lines.