Lycanthropy in German Literature

Lycanthropy in German Literature traces the ways in which the figure of the German wolfman transforms over time and epitomizes different and shifting cultural anxieties, from the religious and superstitious, psychological, and racial. The wolf in German culture signals society's fear of human vice (such as idleness, vagrancy, crime), but it is also a metaphor for sovereign power, specifically resistance to foreign invasion and social pressures on conformity. This study highlights some of the key moments of lycanthropy in German literature and reveals how the wolf metaphor itself becomes degraded over time, culminating in its reduction to vermin of a lower order in the context of genocide. It offers new readings of canonical texts by Hans Jacob Christoph Grimmelshausen, the Grimm Brothers, Ludwig Tieck, Wilhelm Raabe, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, Gunter Grass, and Edgar Hilsenrath. This is an important text for all higher-level students and scholars of German and European literature.

Peter Arnds directs the postgraduate programmes of Comparative Literature and Literary Translation, and teaches German and Italian literature at Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland. He is a Fellow and the author of books on Wilhelm Raabe and Charles Dickens, and on Gunter Grass. He is also a literary translator and has published short stories and poems.