Werewolves

The phantom book

Werewolves. London & New York: Hambledon & London (2005). ISBN 1 85285 402 2 was never published although it is still on offer on various websites and listed in several libraries.

I withdrew it after the publisher kept stalling publication with unreasonable demands although it transpired later that pre-publication sales were not according to expectation and the publisher was negotiating the sale of his company during the publication process; I was not very keen on publishing with the new company either.
The original introduction can be read here.

The publisher became interested in a werewolf project initially when he saw a list of my articles on historical anthropology. It contained a still unpublished piece on werewolves in the Netherlands, largely based on folklore material kept at the Amsterdam Meertens Institute. See: NVB (and look under: `weerwolf’). A considerable number of the Amsterdam texts are not yet available online, however.

After the book debacle, several attempts to place it with another publisher failed because the book, with both historical and modern sections, was thought too hybrid (although this is fitting for werewolves). It was then decided to publish several chapters as journal articles and chapters in edited collections.

werewolf Stump

 

History and folklore

– “I Would Have Eaten You Too”: Werewolf Legends in the Flemish, Dutch and German Area, Folklore 118 (April 2007): 23-43. JSTOR
Most of the Flemish material can now be consulted at the VVB
although this does not include the Daras thesis; some of the online texts are summaries rather than the original texts.

– A Journey to Hell: Reconsidering the Livonian Werewolf, Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft 2 (Summer 2007): 49-67. Project Muse

– The Werewolf, the Witch, and the Warlock: Aspects of Gender in the Early Modern Period, in: Alison Rowlands (ed.), Witchcraft and Masculinities in Early Modern Europe. Basingstoke, Palgrave MacMillan (2009): 191-213.

– A volume of essays by different authors, Werewolf Histories, has been published in October 2015.
My introduction: The Differentiated Werewolf: An Introduction to Cluster Methodology, in: Willem de Blécourt (ed.), Werewolf Histories. London, Palgrave MacMillan (2015): 1-24.

– In the course of 2018 a further essay on the Stump case and its aftermath will be published in German under the title: Werwolfberichte. Der Fall Peter Stumpf und seine Folge’, in: Rita Voltmer (Hg.), Europäische Hexenforschung und Landesgeschichte – Methoden, Regionen, Vergleiche. Trier, Spee.

 

Cinematic werewolves

– Monstrous Theories: Werewolves and the Abuse of History, Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural  2 (2013): 188-212. Project Muse

– The Case of the Cut-off Hand: Angela Carter’s Werewolves in Historical Perspective, in: Hannah Priest (ed.), She Wolf: A Cultural History of Female Werewolves. Manchester, MUP (2015): 148-165 .

–  The Werewolf Pack: A Cinematic Metamorphosis. Contemporary Legend series 3, vol. 4 (2014 [=2016!]): 59-74.

– Are Werewolf Films Xenophobic and Mysogynistic? Notes on Bryan Senn, The Werewolf Filmography: 300+ Movies. BNN Newsletter (April 2017): nr. 9.

– Wisconsin Werewolves: Visual Narration, Cultural Adaptation and Ostensive Action. Gramarye 11 (2017): 35-48.

 

Dutch werewolves

Several of my Dutch werewolf entries can be found in the volume Verhalen van stad en streek. Sagen en legenden in Nederland. Amsterdam, Bert Bakker (2010), written and edited in collaboration with Theo Meder, Jurjen van der Kooi and Ruben A. Koman.
125-126: Drogteropslagen (Drenthe), De verdwaalde weerwolf .
231-233: Ingen (Gelderland), Weerwolven.
405-406: Noordeloos (Zuid-Holland), Tovenaar of weerwolf?
416-417: Sliedrecht (Zuid-Holland), Draden tussen de tanden.
537-538: Blitterswijck (Limburg), Kaarten met de weerwolf .

And some of my very first attempts on the subject; you have to start somewhere …:
– Weerwolven, Drab  4.4 (1980): 14-17.
– De weerwolf, Volksverhalen uit Noord-Brabant (1980): 301-304.

 

General on werewolves in German:

– ‘Wolfsmenschen’. In: Enzyklopädie des Märchens. Berlin, Walter de Gruyter (2013): col. 975-986.

On shapeshifting in general (also in German with an English introduction):
– Willem de Blécourt & Christa Agnes Tuczay (Hrsg), Tierverwandlungen. Codierungen und Diskurse. Tübingen, Francke Verlag (2011).

priest and werewolf

 

 

 

 

 

Priest and Werewolf.
From Gerald of Wales, Topographia Hiberniae, early thirteenth century