Analysis

The artefacts and lay discussed and analysed all share one key aspect of the werewolves that they depict: there is a certain degree of humanity still apparent within the lupine form. While this varies throughout cultures and time periods, the importance lies with how the creature is presented within the media, which is almost always related to the manifestation of human animalistic tendencies. 

Studying Bisclavret with such an interpretation in mind, several instances of such manifestations become clear. For instance, the bisclavret, upon seeing his wife’s suitor, attacks him several times during a banquet for the king; such actions are shunned in human society but the emotions behind such outbursts are still felt by humans. As Augustine defined a human as being “a rational mortal creature”, the expectations in mediaeval cultures would have called for a human to be able to control their emotions and react rationally to such situations: the bisclavret does not and bites his wife’s nose off at the end of the tale. Joyce Salisbury discusses this issue of the characteristics that manifest after metamorphosis in her 1994 book, saying, “In Christian metamorphosis, the exterior changed to reveal some animal-like characteristics of the human, but the human essence, the interior, remained unchanged.” (Salisbury, 1994) This explains why the bisclavret shows some human traits like reason, while allowing other basic instincts like rage and gluttony to surface. This supports that the werewolf metaphor in mediaeval myths was an allegory for allowing unwelcome instincts to take over, as the subject would remain somewhat human in nature while “animalistic” in actions. 

The main artefact exhibited has similar themes to explore in regards to how the artist depicted the werewolf as animal in actions but human in appearance, but perhaps most important is the hunger or gluttony that is apparent in the piece. The wild man not only carries an infant in his mouth for consumption, but has killed several other people in the picture. This could point to the creature being wild with hunger and overkilling his victims, in both an outburst of gluttony and rage that saw him kill anything that stood in his way of a meal. Willem de Blécourt spoke in opposition of this assumption in his paper, stating, “There was no need for a ‘werewolf’ as a separate concept if it was merely synonymous with hunger..” (Blécourt, 2007) While this is a fair vantage on the analysis of werewolf myths, it can be countered by arguing that the werewolf is not simply a gluttonous creature; it is a manifestation of a plethora of undesirable human traits, including gluttony, rage, and bloodlust. 

Such examples of the ways in which werewolves were described in Middle Age myths show the clear correlation between the werewolf’s actions and how undesirable human traits had been key in creating the creature in the first place. The title character of Bisclavret was a man who let his animalistic instincts take over and became a “werewolf”, where he was still able to show his human side while committing reprehensible acts, and the Germanic wild man still looks human but has totally given in to his base urges, killing and eating human flesh on a whim.