Slow Looking at the Object

The print was made between 1510-1515, by the technique of woodcut on paper. the details of the image are quite gruesome, where a "crazed man" is seen masacreing a village of people in the shape of a werewolf. The print is said to be "woodcut" so it looks like it is drawn by individual lines which makes the print very distinct. Woodcut is a medieval printmaking technique, which I feel is interesting as wood is an outdoor material and werewolves are "wild animals." 

The print was made in Hollstein, Germany between 1510-1515. Bisclavret's ritual culminates in the donning of garments. (Benkov,1988) Garments or clothing is a very important symbol within the story as well as the way it affects the actions of the individual characters within the story. Clothing appears to separate the human from the animal or monster in Bisclavret. Bisclavret can only return to human form by donning human clothes; his wife takes advantage of this by stealing his clothes from their hiding place, trapping him in wolf form. However, de France's depiction of this human-animal clothing barrier is sometimes ambiguous: while Bisclavret cannot return to human form without his clothing, he appears to retain human sensibilities and reason. Despite the fact that Bisclavret spends the majority of the story naked in his wolf form, he refuses to dress and return to his human form until he is given privacy. One such peculiar detail implies that Bisclavret's transformation from human to wolf is more than just physical—in preparing to return to human form, he exhibits human qualities such as modesty and shame of the naked body.

My last supporting object (Ja`far ibn Muhammad ibn `Ali, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City, New York) shows an animal with what looks like a deformed nose. In my opinion, this is a very ironic artifact in regards to Bisclavret as he bites off his ex-wife’s nose off when he found out that she betrayed her. This artifact signifies the wife after losing her nose, as she is no longer beautiful and is a noseless “creature.” I feel as though a nose is a very important and distinctive feature on a human’s face, and so when she lost her nose, she also lost a part of her dignity and human-like features. Betrayal is messy, hurtful, and disrespectful as a human being. Because the wife betrayed her husband who loved her and was loyal to, this resulted in negative consequences like her betrayal had a price in a way? Bisclavret soon returns to human form, and his wife is chased out of the country by the Chevalier. All of the wife's female descendants are cursed with noselessness. Several aspects of this conclusion emphasise the unfairness of the wife's treatment, as well as the way her punishment is inextricably linked to her womanhood. The price was losing her right to be able to live a normal life as a human, giving birth to ugly children who were also noseless all because she was not loyal! Loyalty is so important in this story!