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 a.bracke@let.ru.nl

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
ChasseDr Astrid Bracke a.bracke@let.ru.nl

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

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 a.bracke@let.ru.nl

“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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