Resumen
Resumen de El libro de los hombres lobo
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About 3 h 40 min to read.Para quién es
For readers who love folklore, the history of fear and old court records, and for anyone curious about where monster stories come from and why they last.
De qué trata este libro
What if the beast at the edge of the forest is a neighbour you know? Sabine Baring-Gould, an English clergyman in Devon, asks just that in The Book of Were-Wolves, first published in 1865. He was also a folklorist, a novelist and a writer of hymns. Some of the werewolf trials he describes end with people burned for crimes that sound like nightmares. One steady question runs through all of them: what were people really seeing?
En este resumen
- 1A clergyman takes on the wolfFree
- 2The wolf-man begins in ancient myth
- 3The north gives the wolf skin
- 4Medieval tales make the werewolf sad
- 5Real trials turn the tale into terror
- 6Madness and hunger explain the wolf
Idea clave 1 de 6
A clergyman takes on the wolf
Sabine Baring-Gould is a country parson with a huge appetite for old stories. He writes on saints, on medieval myths, on folk songs and on the legends of the West Country. The Book of Were-Wolves comes early in that career. It shows his habits: wide reading, a love of odd detail and a wish to explain old beliefs by reason.
The word werewolf is Old English for man-wolf. He holds that the belief is not the invention of one people, but turns up again and again in places far apart. That spread is the puzzle he sets out to solve.
He also draws a line that matters for the whole book. On one side are tales of men who change shape by magic, by a cursed skin or by a girdle. On the other side are cases, where living people are accused, questioned and punished. A peasant who has heard the tales all his life can come to believe them of himself.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
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Go deeper: the whole of El libro de los hombres lobo
About 3 h 40 min to read.Questions about El libro de los hombres lobo
What is The Book of Were-Wolves about?
It is a study of the belief that people can turn into wolves. Baring-Gould collects myths, sagas, medieval tales and real trial records, then tries to explain the belief through folklore and mental illness.
Who wrote The Book of Were-Wolves and when?
It was written by Sabine Baring-Gould, an English clergyman and folklorist, and first published in 1865. It was an early work in a long career that covered saints, myths and folk songs.
Is The Book of Were-Wolves a true story?
It is not a novel. It is a work of non-fiction that reports old legends and also real court cases from France and Germany. The legends are folklore, but the trials were real events.
What does lycanthropy mean?
It names the belief that a person can become a wolf, and later also the mental condition in which someone feels they are an animal.
Is The Book of Were-Wolves hard to read?
The subject is lively, and the chapters on tales and trials are easy to follow. Some case details are disturbing.