Were-Wolf and Vampire in Romania by Harry A. Senn

Werewolves are thus positioned as a dangerous 'other' figure, one in which the elements of the beast take over the governing righteousness of free will and human thought. Indeed, Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner writes that 'If, as human beings, we all share a dual nature and must struggle to subordinate our lower animal appetites to the higher human faculties of reason and love, then the werewolf represents an extreme case of the general human category,' one in which evil, base instincts take over and control the body (256). The animalistic identity of the shapeshifter often proved to be the danger lurking within an otherwise normal community or individual, and the change from animal to man and back again is shown as a powerful, evil force, a theme which would continue into the Middle Ages and beyond, securing for the werewolf a sordid and troubled history in the minds of readers and lay-folk even in today's enlightened context. To those who know of such tales, lycanthropic monsters were hardly heroes in fact, most were hardly better than mindless beasts, terrorizing the local populace and maiming and killing with wild abandon.

The were-creatures of myth and legend were often described as cursed by gods, witches, magic, and-later-the Christian Devil.

Stories of shape-changing monsters, lycanthropy, and cursed men have been told for countless centuries, living in memory as tragedies, folk tales, and warnings to audiences and readers.

the details of transformation into wolves in the Primary Chronicle, Russian heroic poems (byliny) or Serbian folklore are not known, but the circumstances indicate that this ability was attributed to wizards and heroes. Werewolves with cyclical transformations hid their clothes, because without them they would remain wolves until the end of their lives. One of the conditions for a werewolf’s return to human form was clothes, a motif already found in the antiquity. In medieval chivalrous literature, the traitor was always a woman, either a malicious wife or jealous step-mother. People, almost always men, became wolves either voluntarily with help from magic, wolf skin or enchanted objects such as rings, or involuntarily when somebody cursed or betrayed them. The medieval idea of a werewolf was anatomically an ordinary wolf, but it retained human memory, mind, habits and upbringing. The subject of the study is the transformation of humans into wolves in medieval chivalric romances, rhymed tales (lais), educational works, Norse sagas, Russian literature and Serbian folk songs.

Were-Wolf and Vampire in Romania by Harry A. Senn