Defence Against the Forces of Evil: the Werewolf

This disturbing image of a werewolf devouring a child before the helpless eyes of a group of men and women is the frontispiece of a 16th-century copy of a novel dating back to the 13th century, Guillaume de Palerne. This werewolf, however, is absolutely not evil, but on the contrary the friend of the hero and victim of his stepmother's evil spells. It was the same in Marie de France’s poem "Bisclavret", but the hybrid beast of later fantasy imaginations continued to symbolize the danger of animal instincts. J.K. Rowling inherits this ambivalence, which she presents by opposing two werewolves, the gentle Remus Lupin and the monstrous Fenrir Greyback.