These days there’s just no shortage of novels, movies, and
histories about our pale old buddy the vampire. His furry cousin the werewolf
gets much less respect, though this creature has some 30,000 years of history
under his belt. While most examinations of werewolves pivot on the fiction, the
creature’s role in the real world is less discussed. Before Darwin made it clear
that animals cannot transform back-and-forth between species, people believed
werewolves could exist in the same way that many modern folks believe the Yeti
or the Nessie are possibilities. This is the era and area of lycanthropy that
most concerns The White Devil: The
Werewolf in European Culture, Matthew Beresford’s new sweeping historical
study of werewolves in all their guises. The author tracks the relationship
between man and beast from the pagan wolf cults that aspired to be hunters as
great as the wolf to the post-Christianity downgrading of werewolves to allies
of Satan in the Middle Ages to the physical and mental disorders that may
account for this pervasive belief. With just 235 pages to peddle his theories,
Beresford crams in a tremendous amount of data. Who knew The Epic of Gilgamesh and The
Satyricon referenced werewolves? Or that men were burned at the stake for
being “werewolves” just as women were for being “witches”? Or that much
folklore views the werewolf, witch, and vampire as interchangeable creatures?
Or that a number of historical serial killers were believed to be werewolves?
Indeed, there is little in The White Devil that isn’t really interesting, which helps to make
up for the author’s dry tone and tendency to force his fascinating tidbits into
suiting his subject. His tales’ connections to lycanthropy are often pretty
tenuous, as in his discussion of the child-killer Gilles de Rais. It’s a
fascinating story, for sure, but it has very, very little to do with werewolves
aside from some people thinking they heard wolves howling near his house or
something. Some of his theories, such as the ideas that Renfield of Dracula and Grendel of Beowulf might have been werewolves, are
weakly posited too. However, what The
White Devil lacks in consistency it makes up for in scope. Beresford’s
willingness to toss as many ingredients into his cauldron as he can is
admirable even when they don’t generate any bubbles.
