Werewolves: It is Always Time For our Fursonas
There has been something about the concept of wolves and men together that has spoken to humans down through the ages. Neolithic-era people in places like Poland were buried with wolf teeth. Wolf totems have been used up into Beowolf’s era. There is even a tale of a person turned into a wolf in the Epic of Gilgamesh.
There has to be something primal here that crosses cultural boundaries, as in the following two stories.
Bisclarvet vs The Metamorphosis
I’ve summarized Marie of France’s Bisclarvet before: A knight turns into a wolf for days on end every week, his wife objects and steals his clothes so she can marry someone else, and the knight, with the king’s help, gets back his old form and punishes the wife.
The Metamorphosis is equally famous, but in case you aren’t the type of weirdo who hunts for old Greek stuff on the internet, here is the summary: The Metamorphosis — like Genesis in the Bible- tells how the world began in a series of shorter stories. One of these stories is about Zeus getting wind of humans misbehaving and coming down to earth to investigate. He sends signs to the people of Arcadia that he is divine, and all the people, except their king, immediately start worshiping him. King Lycaon, instead, breaks all of the taboos, including murdering a hostage and feeding the body to Zeus to prove Zeus isn’t divine. Zeus turns Lycaon out into the fields in the body of a wolf as punishment.
Similarities
The first point of comparison here is format. Bisclarvet is part of a series of poems, one among 14. King Lycaon is one story among many founding myths.
They also might be part of an earlier tradition. The King Lycaon story definitely was, as Lycaon is referenced all of the place in Ancient Greece as the archetypal bad guy.
Bisclarvet comes out of a tradition of sung sagas, and was followed by another poem by someone else that sounds almost exactly like it some 50 years later. Pulling from the same source or plagiarism in a time before copyright? You decide.
But probably the biggest point of similarity in the stories is that the form of the man may change, but his personality doesn’t. Bisclarvet never stops being a loyal, good doggo. Lycaon was always a blood-thirsty murderer. The fursona is just outside dross.
Differences
The biggest difference is the sympathetic characterization. Sir Bisclarvet is a knight who is cursed and assumed to be pure of heart.
Lycaon is being punished for being impious and is assumed to be evil.
And the punishment aspect is dropped in Bisclarvet. Marie says that werewolves were a thing and dangerous but doesn’t tell us how her knight came to become one. He inherited it, perhaps? There were a lot of stories at the time about how some groups of people turned into wolves on the regular as part of their cultural heritage.
There is also a bit of a shift from religious tome to secular tome. Lycaon’s evilness consists of breaking taboos and not showing the gods respect. Bisclarvet’s goodness comes from loyalty to a king.
What Have We Learned Here?
These sources come from different cultures, and still the notion of a man becoming a wolf crosses these boundaries.
The central theme of a soul remaining constant, no matter the outer form, also stays the same, so the differences can tell us what values we are looking at.
For instance, could we argue that Lycaon might have been in the right here, and Bisclarvet was a suck-up?
Zeus seems like a jerk, and if the king can be easily persuaded to take a wild animal in just because it’s kissing his royal toes, maybe he deserves a quick nip on the hindquarters rather than perpetual obeisance. Maybe what we’re seeing here is a change in the definition of good behavior.
So, wolf as avatar of badness remains, but what that avatar represents in specific has changed. Maybe now we could write a version where Dame Bisclarvet helps her husband sneak into the castle to deliver that bite to the royal behind that is richly deserved and Zeus admits that maybe he should lay off the animal sacrifice.
Sources:
“Fourteen Lais” Marie of France
“The White Devil: The Werewolf in European Culture” Matthew Beresford
“Metamorphosis” Ovid
Monster Talk “Ancient Werewolves”