The Curse of the Wer.. - Site de Thomas - Free

20 THE CURSE OF THE WEREWOLF
For the growing number of scholars engaged in the study of myth
and folklore, the approach recommended by Ranke and Comte seemed
increasingly attractive. As Richard Dorson demonstrates in The British
Folklorists: A History, the romantic writers’ enthusiasm for the
inspirational myths and legends of antiquity shaded into a more empiricist
approach to the collection and analysis of such material as
the nineteenth century advanced. Scott’s publication of his Letters
on Demonology and Witchcraft at the end of a successful career as a
writer of historical novels exemplifies this progression, although it also
points to the mixture of rationalism and romanticism which influenced
the study of myth and folklore, since it is unlikely that Scott’s foray
into empirical research signalled his wholesale abandonment of the
romantic principles which had shaped his work as a novelist. Indeed,
the literary flourishes that made him a popular novelist are also a
feature of his scholarly treatise, and in this sense his use of language is
a clear indication of his commitment to both intellectual paradigms.
Scott’s study included a short passage on lycanthropy, which drew
from a variety of texts on the subject from the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, an inclusion which generated further interest in
the genealogy of the werewolf. Just two years after the publication
of Letters on Demonology and Witchcraft, a poem that had been
translated from French into English in the thirteenth century was
unearthed, edited and published with an explanatory introduction and
glossary — a production that also reflected the growth of interest in
medieval history that Scott had helped to engender. This edition of
the poem was entitled William and the Werwolf, although subsequent
editions have used the more accurate translation The Romance of
William of Palerne. Although the werewolf in the story is benevolent,
the title page of the first modern edition depicts a woodcut of a
werewolf attacking a child (Figure 1). The use of this picture, as well
as the adaptation of the title to include the word ‘werewolf’, conflicts
with the more sober approach articulated in the introductory notes,
presenting another instance in which the empirical impulse to present
‘the facts’ collided with the desire to allow the poetic imagination
free rein.