11 h 15 minAudiobook17 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What happens when fear of a beast becomes an accusation against a person?
In Human Animals, Frank Hamel explores an old, unsettling belief: that people can take on the shape or nature of animals. He gathers cases and tales of werewolves and related creatures, asking how people across different ages explain them—and what those explanations reveal about the people who tell them.
The stakes become stark when belief meets the law. In parts of early modern Europe, people accused of being werewolves face arrest, questioning and punishment. Hamel also considers illness and delusion, including the sufferer who truly believes he has become an animal. Behind these cases lies a troubling question about where humanity ends.
What you’ll discover
- An old fear takes shape Explore a belief in human transformation that reaches beyond one country or century.
- When suspicion becomes punishment See how fear of werewolves brings accusations into the courts of early modern Europe.
- Another way to read Consider how doctors and thinkers turn to illness and delusion to explain these cases.
- The roots of horror Meet werewolf beliefs through stories of fear, accusation and the uncertain boundary between species.
- A question that stays Ask what these tales reveal about the people who tell them and their fears.
Who will love it
Readers who love folklore, werewolf and witch lore, ghost stories and strange old trial records, and who enjoy comparing legends from Japan, Africa, Europe and the Americas in one collection.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- People everywhere believe in changing shape
- Skins, ointments and cures for the change
- Lycanthropy as sickness and as wonder tale
- Totems, bush-souls and souls in animals
- Animal dances, masks and the wish to become
- Faces, scapegoats and saints among the beasts
- Werewolf trials and what the judges concluded
- Lion men, fox wives, witches and familiars
- Fairy tales, monsters and serpent brides
- Cats, omens, ghosts and the search for an explanation
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- 15-minute summary
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- Hardcover
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Read and hear Animaux humains in 25 languages and switch at any time. Or read two side by side, paragraph by paragraph: the way to learn a language with a book you love.
Animaux humains
by Frank Hamel · 1915
A hunter burns a dogskin, a farmer's wife loses a hand, and a priest hears a wolf beg for help.
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In short
Human Animals is a wide-ranging collection of beliefs, trial records, legends and ghost stories about people who turn into beasts and beasts that act like people. Its author, Frank Hamel, writes as a collector and a student of the occult.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
People everywhere believe in changing shape
Hamel starts with the ancient idea that all beings share a single spirit that takes on different outward forms. He quotes Leland, who says that in the beginning men were animals and animals were men. Tribal peoples, he argues, give animals feelings like their own and see only a thin wall between the two worlds. Folklore is full of stories that rest on this idea.
He then sorts the ways of changing. Some changes are chosen and some are forced. A sorcerer, a witch or the devil may act as the agent. A person may also change on purpose, and the motives often look suspicious. Medieval courts charged such people with greed, cruelty and the wish to eat human flesh.
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What is Human Animals by Frank Hamel about?
It collects beliefs and tales about people who become animals and animals who act like people. Werewolves, witches' familiars, fox wives, serpent brides, bird maidens and animal ghosts all appear, along with the theories that try to explain them.
Is Human Animals a true story or folklore?
It is a survey of folklore, trial records and occult writing, not a novel. Hamel reports what peoples and writers have believed, quotes court records such as those of Jean Grenier, and then discusses possible explanations.
What is lycanthropy in this book?
Lycanthropy means the belief that a person has turned into a wolf or another beast. Hamel treats it both as a folk belief and as an illness described by early doctors, who spoke of melancholy and hallucination.
The author
Frank Hamel
1869–1957 · British author and biographer
Frank Hamel was an English writer who gathered historical and occult material for general readers. Human Animals shows his wide reading in folklore, travellers' accounts, witch trials and the works of occultists such as Eliphas Levi and Paracelsus. Little more is stated in the book about his own life.
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