"Among those, chevaliers was he
-so richly dressed, so splendidly!-
who's wed the wife of Bisclavret.
little he knew or thought just yet
that he would find his foe so near!
Soon as he came, this chevalier,
to court, and Bisclavret could see
the man, he ran up furiously,
sank in his teeth, and dragged him close.
Manu the injuries and woes
he would have suffered, but the king
called out commands, while brandishing
his staff. The beast rushed, twice, that day,
to bite the man; all felt dismay,
for none had seen the beast display
toward anyone, in any way,
such viciousness. There must be reason
the household said, for him to seize on
the knight, who must have done him wrong;
the wish for vengeance seemed so strong." (De France, 191-210).
Bisclavret by Marie De France is about a man names Bisclavret who is a knight in the kingdom who disappears for three days every week. When his wife questions him on it and demands he tell her where he keeps his clothes, he tells her, and then she goes to another knight and promises to be his mistress if he takes her husband’s clothes. After he does, she marries him and Bisclavret is forced to live as a werewolf in the forest when the king finds him and takes him to the palace to live with him. Sometime later, Bisclavret sees his ex-wife’s new husband and attacks him, and then attacks his ex-wife, who then returns the clothes which allow him to become a human knight again. As for the Primary Object that I have chosen, it is a woodcut print of a werewolf attacking and eating people. It is called The Werewolf or the Cannibal by Lucas Cranach the Elder from Germany during the 15th-16th century. This is to show that although they are still human and can resume human form, they are still seen as monsters who attack others. The way that the primary object and the passage will be connected is to show that, in this time, most people like Bisclavret's ex-wife viewed werewolves as filthy creatures and monsters who killed humans. Yet, in the passage, even though he shows the behaviour that is seen in the woodcut print, the king and his men do not view him as a monster, but as somebody who was wronged by the knight. In Bisclavret, although it was the norm at the time to view werewolves as monstrous figures, the king and his people still accept him as a human even in his non-human form.