In the Company of Wolves: Werewolves, Wolves and Wild Children - Paperback

by Sam George (Editor), Bill Hughes (Editor)

In the company of wolves presents further research from the Open Graves, Open Minds Project. It connects together innovative research from a variety of perspectives on the cultural significance of wolves, wild children and werewolves as portrayed in different media and genres.

We begin with the wolf itself as it has been interpreted as a cultural symbol and how it figures in contemporary debates about wilderness and nature. Alongside this, we consider eighteenth-century debates about wild children -- often thought to have been raised by wolves and other animals - and their role in key questions about the origins of language and society. The collection continues with essays on werewolves and other shapeshifters as depicted in folk tales, literature, film and TV, concluding with the transition from animal to human in contemporary art, poetry and fashion.

Back Jacket

Amidst concerns about our relationship with nature, in a culture informed by Romanticism and a post-Enlightenment doubt about the centrality of humanity, contemporary fictions often turn to the animal and to transitions between animal and human to interrogate what is unique about our species. In her werewolf paranormal romance Linger, the Young Adult author Maggie Stiefvater quotes Rainer Maria Rilke: 'even the most clever of animals see that we are not surely at home in our interpreted world'. Rilke's sense of the amphibious nature of being human and our status as speaking, interpreting animal raises the essential questions that this volume seeks to challenge and respond to.

Bringing together innovative research on the cultural significance of wolves, wild children, and werewolves as portrayed in different media and genres, these essays situate the werewolf in a broader context of animality and sociality, challenging the simplistic model of the werewolf as 'the beast within'. We invite you now into the company of wolves and to listen to their voices as they sound in 'our interpreted world'.

Author Biography

Sam George is Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Hertfordshire

Bill Hughes is Co-convenor of the Open Graves, Open Minds Project