The White Devil: The Werewolf in European Culture

by Matthew Beresford

From Ovid’s Lycaon to Professor Lupin, from Teen Wolf to An American Werewolf in Paris , the lycanthrope, or werewolf, comes to us frequently on the page and the silver screen. These interpretations often display lycanthropy as a curse, with the afflicted person becoming an uncontrollable, feral beast during every full moon. But this is just one version of the werewolf—its origins can be traced back thousands of years to early prehistory, and everything from Iron Age bog bodies and Roman gods to people such as Joan of Arc, Adolf Hitler, and Sigmund Freud feature in its story. Exploring the role of this odd assortment of ideas and people in the myth, The White Devil tracks the development of the werewolf from its birth to the present day, seeking to understand why the wolf curse continues to hold a firm grip on the modern imagination.


Combining early death and burial rites, mythology, folklore, archaeological evidence, and local superstitions, Matthew Beresford explains that the werewolf has long been present in the beliefs and mythology of the many cultures of Europe. He examines prehistoric wolf cults, the use of the wolf as a symbol of ancient Rome, medieval werewolf executions, and the eradication of wolves by authorities in England during the Anglo-Saxon period. He also surveys werewolf trials, medical explanations, and alleged sightings, as well as the instances in which lycanthropes appear in literature and film. With sixty illustrations of these often terrifying—but sometimes noble—beasts, The White Devil offers a new understanding of the survival of the werewolf in European culture.

Genres: History, Werewolves, Nonfiction

262 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2013

Reviews

[Christine · Rating 1 out of 5]

Welp, that was a waste of time. There is much here that he doesn't fully connect or just simply leaps over.

But why are you quoting Shakespeare during the Medieval section and Chaucer during the anicent?

[Colin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Possibly the lowest I have ever rated a book, and of course I feel awful about it. But it's not well-written and takes too many giant leaps of shoddy reasoning to warrant higher. A lot of the constituent parts are there to make a better book, they were simply put together hastily or by someone who, like me with a car, had no business even trying.

[Alex · Rating 1 out of 5]

i have never left a review on goodreads before, being both a) too lazy and b) confident that others will do the work for me. this book, however, was so awful that it has forced me to take this new step.

it was absolutely atrocious. felt like i was reading an undergraduate essay the entire time--and not a particularly good one. poorly researched with obvious biases and a heavy reliance upon outdated theories (existence of some universal 'earth mother' cult/matriarchal society in the depths of antiquity, for one, which is somehow connected to werewolves: what is this, werewolf the apocalypse?). rife with spelling and grammar errors. no understanding of even the fundamentals of historiography: and for historians such as myself there can really be no greater crime. many claims are unsubstantiated. indeed beresford does, at times, even veer into pseudoarchaeology and cryptozoology to provide his (spurious) 'evidence'.

i went into this looking for an interesting companion to the many many books written on early modern demonology and the witch-trials (most of which devote very little space to werewolves). my time would have been better spent doing, well, literally anything else.

[Cody K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Four stars for personal entertainment (like a slightly more grounded episode of Ancient Aliens).
One star for poor logic, research reliability, and weak authority. So, an average of 2.5 which rounds up to three stars. Not bad for such a sloppily written book.

As other reviews mention, the book has several non sequiturs, providing little empirical evidence for its claims. Could there be a grain of truth to its conclusions? Maybe. It's fun to speculate the Mesolithic and Neolithic origins of werewolves.

But the author, not only as someone bearing a doctorate in archaeology but as a representative of science, owes his audience a stronger foundation to his claims than loosely connected speculation.

If anyone knows of more credible research involving therianthropic imagery in stone age cultures, let me know in the comments. Christopher Chippindale's interview in the Guardian article, "Stone Age Man's Terrors Still Stalk Modern Nightmares," offers at least a little more grounded speculation, if a little vague.

[ReD · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5
Full Review coming later

Surprised this was published so recently because a lot of the information was just....outdated. Many indigenous beliefs were lumped together under 'Earth mother worship' and archetypes were examined even when talking about specific regions. Chapter titles were a bit misleading. Author would wander away from the point he was trying to make. We have moved far beyond Freud with psychology but I don't exactly fault the author here since most university English departments seem stuck on Freud, too.

Despite that there's a few hidden gems in here. I did enjoy reading it, although I think that's because I enjoy the subject matter so much. I'm just really surprised this was published so recently when so much other information is available.

[Chelsea R.H. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book was just... weird.
I was hoping for an engaging and interesting account of wolves, men and, of course, werewolves. But in reality it was mainly wild speculation about prehistoric peoples and hastily glued together scraps of psychology (which spent a long time on a patient of Freud, who had a dream about wolves as a child, and then was scared of wolves...you know as children often are). I also think it tried to read too much into the creation of werewolves, talking about mental illness and physical illnesses, something about the Earth mother cults and psychotropic drugs etc etc, when I'm almost certain ancient people just looked at wolves and thought " wow, they're cool. What if I could turn into one of those!"
I wanted to like it, and I was hoping it would provide some rich fodder for the werewolf novel I'm currently writing, but unfortunately it fell very short of the mark. I definitely would not recommend this book.

[RedDagger · Rating 2 out of 5]

It hits all the usual points of werewolf history that any examination needs to, but...
-adds on a load of extraneous content that is weakly connected (if any attempt is made to connect it at all) to werewolves, which might have been justified by the opening line of "This book is not just about werewolves, it is about wolves and it is about Man" if the word "werewolf" wasn't constantly abused throughout on matters unrelated to werewolves
-analyses will be either elaborated on, or merely asserted, at random
-there's little critical thought put into evaluating sources
-I noticed avoidable errors throughout
-sources are introduced sometimes seemingly at random, jumping around with zero cohesion within the chapter's structure
-The author has a weird fascination with his Earth Mother thesis

Avoid.

[Zoe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an example of fiction melding with textbook truths. Beresford does a great job at explaining both the historical contexts and the supernatural obsessions that continue to make werewolves a part of popular culture. The book includes cultural and anthropological examples of early shamanistic worship of wolves and leads through strange supernatural and historical anecdotes as well as some medical explanations that never truly explain. It ends in tying into films from the past 100 years. On the negative, I found that a lot of his evidence tended to veer off into the "how does this relate to werewolves" realm, and more often felt like he was pulling more information from his previous book (which I have not read) on vampires and just correlating how vampire and werewolf (and witch) myths were often indistinguishable.
This felt a lot like an academic essay that was meant to be more lighthearted than factual, but did contain a lot of interesting information for those interested in historical occultism and supernatural forces. Overall a fun read.