Lycanthropy in German Literature

Abstract

Lycanthropy in German Literature argues that as a symbol of both power and parasitism, the human wolf of the Germanic Middle Ages is iconic to the representation of the persecution of undesirables in the German cultural imagination from the early modern age to the post-war literary scene. Introduction -- The wolfman between history, myth and biopolitics -- Carnivalizing the ban : the Schelm's lycanthropy in the age of melancholy -- Sexual predator or liberator : wolves and witches in Romanticism -- Gypsies and Jews as wolves in realist fiction -- From wolf man to bug man : Freud, Hesse, Kafka -- Hitler the wolf and literary parodies after 1945.