wolves in english literature

Wolves in English literature

20 March 2014 Astrid Bracke

¡ What is the role of the wolf in British literature?

¡ Can we use these narratives to tease apart the real and the imaginary wolf?

¡ Can we use these narratives to think about the Dutch context, and possible return of the wolf?

Dr Astrid Bracke [email protected]

Robisch ¡  The “real” wolf

¡  The world-wolf ¡  The corporeal wolf

¡  The ghost wolf

Ø Can we tease these apart and should we?


Robisch ¡  “One reason that wolf books often depict the

wolves of imagination and reality in a mystifying relationship is that humanity has almost no working knowledge of potential interspecies moral universes” (24)

¡  “We have not as yet been able to interpret the codes by which other species practice ethics” (24)


The short story ¡ Wolves became extinct in late 15th century in

England;

¡ National English literature didn’t really develop until Elizabethan age (1558 -1603)

¡  Hence, there are no wolves in English literature


The longer story ¡  Beowulf (8-11th century)

¡  The Middle English romance and hunt (12th c to 1470s)

¡  The Duchess of Malfi (1614)

¡  Ted Hughes (1982; 1998)

¡  Sarah Hall (2013, and forthcoming)


Beowulf ¡  8th – 11th century, written in

Old English;

¡  Beo-wulf, i.e. wolf?

¡ Grendal ¡  Enemy, monster, demonic;

¡  Wearg gast, ‘criminal being’: the condemned or exiled one

Ø Anglo-Saxons used the term wulfes heafod for ‘outlaw’


Middle English romance and hunt ¡ William and the Werewolf or William

of Palerne ¡  Originally French 1200, English 1350

¡  Son of Spanish king, in Spain, turned into wolf & hunted

¡  Exception to Middle English romance

Ø Wolves and the hunt rarely feature in Middle English literature (12th century to 1470s)


Of the wolf and his nature ¡ Great strength, and very fast;

¡  “It is a wonderfully wily and gynnous (cunning) beast, and more false than any other beast to take all advantage, for he will never fly but a little save when he has need”

¡ Cannot be tamed: “For he knoweth well and woteth well that he doth evil, and therefore men ascrieth (cry at) and hunteth and slayeth him. And yet for all that he may not leave his evil nature”

Master of Game. Edward of Norwich. 1406-1413. Translation of Phoebus’ Livre de Chasse


Of the fox and his nature ¡  “she is a false beast and as malicious as a wolf”

¡  “fair” – pleasurable – hunting;

¡ Although cunning, foxes let themselves be captured eventually



Wolves and men ¡ Werewolves: wolves that eat people, and no

longer want to eat animal meat

¡  “They are called wer-wolves, for men should beware of them, and they be so cautious that when they assail a man they have a holding upon him before the man can see them ... they can wonder well keep from any harness (arms) that a man beareth”



The Duchess of Malfi (1614) – John Webster

¡  Ferdinand suffers from lycanthropy:

In those that are possessed with ‘t, there o’erflows Such melancholy humor, they imagine themselves to be transformed into wolves; Steal forth to churchyards in the dead of night, And dig dead bodies up: as two nights since One met the duke ‘bout midnight in a lane Behind Saint Mark’s Church, with the leg of a man Upon his shoulder; and he howled fearfully; Said he was a wolf, only the difference Was, a wolf’s skin was hairy on the outside, His on the inside (5.2.8-17)


Lycanthropy ¡  The reality of the werewolf – metamorphosis from

human to animal; ¡  Fiction and folklore

¡  The delusion that one was capable of such transformations – madness, illness, result of drugs ¡  Medicine

¡  Religious dimension: ¡  As an animal, Ferdinand is not responsible for his

deeds, but how much of an animal is he? And is he an animal throughout, also during the killings, or only goes mad afterwards?


¡ Wolves and werewolves were theoretical threats to the English – neither wolves nor werewolves recorded in early modern England

¡ Other threats - “hairy on the inside” ¡  Foreigners in general – lycanthropy as ‘un-

Englishness’;

¡  Catholics;

¡  Irish

¡  Irish are wild and bloody peasants who “once a yeare are turned into wolves” (Spenser 1596)


Robinson Crusoe (1719) – Daniel Defoe

¡ Wolves in the Pyrenees ¡  “we began to hear wolves howl in the wood on our

left, in a frightful manner, and presently we saw about a hundred coming on directly towards us, all in a body, and most of them in a line, as regularly as an army drawn up by experienced officers”

¡  Attacked unprovoked

¡  The bear, on the other hand... ¡  “if you don’t meddle with him, he won’t meddle with

you; but then you must take care to be very civil to him, and give him the road; for he is a very nice gentleman and won’t step out of his way for a prince”


Wolves in English literature ¡ Wolves seem barely referenced, even in relation to

Anglo-Saxon past;

¡ Wolves are associated with un-Englishness and Catholicism;

¡ Wolf narratives consistently set abroad (part. Spain, Italy)

Ø Robisch’ malevolent ghost wolf?

Ø The return of the wolf in contemporary literature?


The return of the wolf Woolly-bear white, the old wolf Is listening to London. His eyes, withered in Under the white wool, black peepers, While he makes nudging, sniffing offers At the horizon of noise, the blue-cold April Invitation of airs. The lump of meat Is his confinement. He has probably had all his life Behind wires, fraying his eye-efforts On the criss-cross embargo. He yawns Peevishly like an old man and the yawn goes Right back into Kensington and there stops Floored with glaze. Eyes Have worn him away. Children's gazings Have tattered him to a lumpish Comfort of woolly play-wolf. He's weary.

Ted Hughes. “Wolfwatching”. 1982 Dr Astrid Bracke [email protected]

His eyes Keep telling him all this is real And that he's a wolf--of all things To be in the middle of London, of all Futile, hopeless things. Do Arctics Whisper on their wave-lengths--fantasy-draughts Of escape and freedom? His feet, The power-tools, lie in front of him-- He doesn't know how to use them.

Ted Hughes. “Wolfwatching”. 1982


We were comforted by wolves. Under that February moon and the moon of March The Zoo had come close. And in spite of the city Wolves consoled us. Two or three times each night For minutes on end They sang. They had found where we lay. And the dingos, and the Brazilian-maned wolves - All lifted their voices together With the grey Northern pack.

The wolves lifted us in their long voices. They wound us and enmeshed us In their wailing for you, their mourning for us, They wove us into their voices. We lay in your death. In the fallen snow, under falling snow. As my body sank into the folk-take Where the wolves are singing in the forest For two babes, who have turned, in their sleep, Into orphans Beside the corpse of their mother.

Ted Hughes. “Life After Death”. 1998. Dr Astrid Bracke [email protected]

“I want to see wolves reintroduced because wolves are fascinating, and because they help to reintroduce the complexity and trophic diversity in which our ecosystems are lacking. I want to see wolves reintroduced because they feel to me like the shadow that flits between the systole and diastole, because they are the necessary monsters of the mind, inhabitants of the more passionate world against which we have locked our doors” (George Monbiot, Feral).


“It is perfectly made: long legs, sheer chest, dressed for coldness in wraps of fur. It comes close to the wire and stands looking, eyes level with hers. Pure yellow gaze. Long nose, short mane. A dog before dogs were invented. A god of dogs. A creature so fine she can hardly comprehend it”

Sarah Hall. “The Reservation”


The return of the real wolf in literature?

“When wolves nearly disappeared from within the nation’s borders, the ability even to think of wolves was threatened” (Robisch 26)


¡  Beowulf. Trans. Seamus Heaney. London: Faber and Faber, 2000.

¡  Defoe, Daniel. Robinson Crusoe. 1719.

¡  Edward of Norwich. Master of Game. 1406-1413. Available online

¡  Hall, Sarah. “The Reservation”. Granta 123 (2013): 313-328.

¡  Hirsch, Brett D. “An Italian Werewolf in London: Lycanthropy and The Duchess of Malfi”. Early Modern Literary Studies 11.2 (September 2005).

¡  Hughes, Ted. “Wolfwatching”. Wolfwatching. London: Faber and Faber, 1989.

¡  Hughes, Ted. “Life After Death”. Birthday Letters. London: Faber and Faber, 1998.


¡  Marvin, William Perry. Hunting Law and Ritual in Medieval English Literature. Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2006.

¡  Monbiot, George. Feral. London: Allen Lane, 2013.

¡  Mullan, John. “Ten of the best wolves in literature”. Guardian 9 October 2010.

¡  Robisch, S. K. Wolves and the Wolf Myth in American Literature. Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2009.

¡  Rooney, Anne. Hunting in Middle English Literature. Cambridge, D.S. Brewer, 1993.

¡  UK Wolf Conservation Trust: http://ukwct.org.uk/

¡  Webster, John. The Duchess of Malfi. 1614.


wolves in english literature

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nl wolves

sarah hall

nl robisch

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ted hughes

real wolf