The metamorphosis of man to beast has fascinated audiences for millennia. The werewolves of medieval literature were forced to conform to the Church's view of metamorphosis and, in so doing, transformed from bestial and savage to benevolent and rational. Analysis of Marie de France's Bisclavret, the anonymous Arthur and Gorlagon, the Irish tale The Crop-Eared Dog, and the French roman d'aventure Guillaume de Palerne reveals insight into medieval views of change, identity, and what it meant to exist in the medieval world. Each of these tales is told from the werewolf's point of view, and in each the wolf undergoes a fury or madness where he cannot seem to help turning savage and harming people. This 'rage of the wolf' lies at the root of the identities of these werewolves, reflecting the conflict between good and evil, the physical and the spiritual, and Church doctrine and a rapidly changing society.

Cette thèse examine d’abord les personnages merveilleux dans cinq lais de Marie de France, et reconnaît trois types de merveilleux : féerique, amoureux et lycanthropique. Sans motivation ni explicitation – donc par moyen d’un silence narratif – on reconnaît le personnage merveilleux « type ». Une analyse narratologique montre qu’un personnage peut être merveilleux sans être « type » et qu les cinq lais étudiés sont construits selon une focalisation sur le personnage humain. Examinant les actes magiques, cette thèse conclut que la magie des merveilleux « types » ne diffère d’un acte de celle des personnages non « types » que par la motivation psychologique. M’appuyant sur les lois universelles de la magie décrites par Hubert et Mauss, je conclus que Chievrefueil décrit en fait la construction d’une baguette magique. Dernièrement, l’altérité du personnage humain crée la possibilité d’une rencontre – d’habitude érotisée – entre le monde humain et le monde merveilleux et lance le récit.

Thesis (M.F.A.)--Rochester Institute of Technology, 2009. / Typescript.

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This thesis explores the embodied experiences of the rural population in nineteenth-century France. The prevailing historiography has treated rural bodily culture as a cultural survival swept away by ‘modernisation’ in the nineteenth century. By turning to the lives and words of rural labourers and artisans from the Landes de Gascogne, the thesis questions this account, instead showing ways that popular cultures of the body were flexible traditions, adapted by individuals to meet new needs. It does so through a close focus on the stories, songs, and other oral traditions collected by Félix Arnaudin (1844-1921) in the Grande-Lande between around 1870 and 1914. The thesis focuses on the lives of a few of Arnaudin’s 759 folklore informants, showing both how their bodily experiences were changing during this period, and how songs and stories were creative interventions, designed to shape bodily possibilities from below. The thesis draws attention to the surprising shape of rural experiences of the body, which focused on body parts such as the legs and skin for reasons specific to everyday life, while largely ignoring issues that historians might have assumed would be important, such as religion. It argues that the ordinary men and women who performed stories and sang songs were active agents in constructing their own bodies in response to material conditions of physical illness and disability, as well as a changing environment, changing class relations, or changing sexual norms in the Grande-Lande. The thesis presents an emotional and experiential view of rural bodies with a sensitivity to the different experiences of men and women, young and old, poorer and richer, but emphasizes that the body must be seen in the round, as a unifying concern that links together issues of social class, environmental change, sexual relations, work, disability, and religion.

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Since before recorded history, werewolves have captivated human imagination. Simultaneously, they represent our deepest fears as well as our desire to connect with our primal ancestry. Today, werewolves are portrayed negatively, associated with violence, cruelty, cannibalism, and general malevolence. However, in ages past, legends depicted them not as monsters, but as a range of neutral to benevolent individuals, such as traveling companions, guardians, and knights. The robust legacy of the werewolf spans from prehistory, through ancient Greece and Rome, to the Middle Ages, into the Early Modern period, and finally into present-day popular culture. Over the ages, the view of the werewolf has become distorted. Media treatment of werewolves is associated with inferior writing, lacking in thought, depth, and meaning. Werewolves as characters or creatures are now generally seen as single-minded and one-dimensional, and they want nothing more than to kill, devour, and possibly violate humans. Hollywood depictions have resulted in the destruction of the true meanings behind werewolf legends that fascinated and terrified humans for so many ages. If these negative trends were reversed, perhaps entertainment might not only discover again some of the true meanings behind the werewolf myth, but also take the first steps toward reversing negative portrayals of wolves themselves, which humans have, for eons, wrongfully stigmatized and portrayed as evil, resulting in wolves receiving crueler treatment than virtually any other animal. To revive the many questions posed by lycanthropy, entertainment must show respect to the rich history of the legend — and rediscover the benevolent werewolf. / Master of Arts

Este trabalho discute a presença do mito do lobisomem na obra Fogo Morto, de José Lins do Rego. São abordados os aspectos do mito, do imaginário social e da identidade presentes no enredo, bem como a forma como esses interagem. O estudo centra-se no personagem José Amaro, seleiro de uma localidade rural da Várzea do Paraíba, que através do imaginário social tem sua identidade vinculada ao arquétipo do licantropo. O estudo divide-se em quatro momentos distintos: apresentação da obra Fogo Morto e sua contextualização na literatura brasileira; a constituição do mito do lobisomem em Fogo Morto; o desenvolvimento de um imaginário social e seus efeitos na comunidade; o problema da identidade de José Amaro. / Submitted by Marcelo Teixeira (mvteixeira@ucs.br) on 2014-05-28T16:27:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Dangelo Muller.pdf: 802900 bytes, checksum: 7c2a68fd8a1df2933e69572e298575fb (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2014-05-28T16:27:35Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Dissertacao Dangelo Muller.pdf: 802900 bytes, checksum: 7c2a68fd8a1df2933e69572e298575fb (MD5) / This work discusses the presence of the myth of the werewolf in the book Fogo Morto, by José Lins do Rego. They are approached the aspects of myth, social imaginary and identity presents in story, well as the form as those interact. The study focuses the character José Amaro, saddler of a rural locality of the Várzea do Paraíba, that through social imaginary haves your identity linked to archtype of the lycanthrope. The study is divided in four distinct moments: apresentation of the book Fogo Morto and his context in the brazilian literature; the composition of the myth of the werewolf in Fogo Morto; the development of a social imaginary and his effects in the community; the problem of the identity of the José Amaro.

Este trabalho discute a presença do mito do lobisomem na obra Fogo Morto, de José Lins do Rego. São abordados os aspectos do mito, do imaginário social e da identidade presentes no enredo, bem como a forma como esses interagem. O estudo centra-se no personagem José Amaro, seleiro de uma localidade rural da Várzea do Paraíba, que através do imaginário social tem sua identidade vinculada ao arquétipo do licantropo. O estudo divide-se em quatro momentos distintos: apresentação da obra Fogo Morto e sua contextualização na literatura brasileira; a constituição do mito do lobisomem em Fogo Morto; o desenvolvimento de um imaginário social e seus efeitos na comunidade; o problema da identidade de José Amaro. / This work discusses the presence of the myth of the werewolf in the book Fogo Morto, by José Lins do Rego. They are approached the aspects of myth, social imaginary and identity presents in story, well as the form as those interact. The study focuses the character José Amaro, saddler of a rural locality of the Várzea do Paraíba, that through social imaginary haves your identity linked to archtype of the lycanthrope. The study is divided in four distinct moments: apresentation of the book Fogo Morto and his context in the brazilian literature; the composition of the myth of the werewolf in Fogo Morto; the development of a social imaginary and his effects in the community; the problem of the identity of the José Amaro.

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