Reviewed by:

• Werewolves in Norse-Icelandic Literature: Between the Monster and the Man by Minjie Su
• Chris White

Minjie Su’s presents a compelling argument about the nature and role of werewolves in Norse-Icelandic literature and sagas. Su collects and examines the surviving Norse-Icelandic werewolf narratives and approaches them through a number of interesting and varied lenses, leading to a unique and comprehensive analysis.

Su does this throughout the structure of the text, which is divided into analyses of the various motifs that make up the medieval werewolf. These move from the external: ‘The Werewolf’s Skin’, ‘The Werewolf’s Clothing and the She-Wolf’; to the internal: ‘The Werewolf’s Landscape and Mindscape’, ‘The Werewolf’s Purpose’; and, rather adroitly, through the internalising of the external: ‘The Werewolf’s Food and Food Taboo’. This feels like a natural progression and allows the reader to move from what seems so obviously ‘other’ about the werewolf—the physical metamorphosis of man-to-beast—to the more complex internal ‘other’—the mentality of the man-as-wolf.

A particularly intriguing component of Su’s analysis is the juxtaposition of the werewolf and leprosy, using Susan Small and Didier Anzieu’s conceptualisation of the ‘skin-ego’, which Su develops to build a comprehensive examination of the importance of skin and its reflection of internal realities in medieval Norse-Icelandic literature. Su approaches this through the analysis of skin as an identifier through a reading of (. 1330), through which she ably demonstrates the importance of skin in both social acceptance and rejection, showing how ‘the skin channels [End Page 240] information from the inside and gives clues to the outside observers’ in these narratives, which ‘not only alters the individual’s perception of self but also others’ perception of that individual’ (pp. 38–39).

Also important is Su’s adoption of the concept of liminality as a potential explanation for the role of the werewolf in these works, adapting the sociological theories of Arnold van Gennep, Victory Turner, and Claude Lévi-Strauss, tracing the role of emotions in the stories, and what these can reveal about the society and cultures from which these stories sprang. Su also employs Guy Debord’s theories of psychogeography, and Paul S. Langeslag’s research relating to the role that seasons play in the creation of psychogeography. Su’s use of semiotic squares to introduce and summarise the mindscapes of Norse-Icelandic werewolf narratives allows for a ready understanding of the uses of pyschogeography in analysing these tales and presents Su’s findings in an easily comprehendible format. Also of note is Su’s approach to the role of the ‘wicked woman’ as a metaphorical wolf, as a monster in beautiful skin, presented as a counterpoint to her (former) husband’s external monstrosity but internal humanity.

My primary criticism of Su’s work lies in one of the arguments she makes in her third chapter, ‘The Werewolf’s Food and Food Taboo’, where she states that werewolves ‘come very close to tasting human blood and flesh […] [which] leads to the problem of cannibalism, an othering act that would implicate the werewolves in complete monstrosity and [emphasis mine]’ (p. 92). This may seem, at first glance, to be a reasonable position in relation to food taboos, and Su points to the words of P. Kenneth Himmelman, who argued that ‘cannibalism which cannot be seen can be deemed morally acceptable’, in order to justify the notion that a man who is a wolf must, by living as the wolf, at some point taste human blood or flesh (p. 92). But in another tale, albeit one that is not Norse-Icelandic in origin, that of Raimbaud de Pouget from Gervase of Tilbury’s (Gervase of Tilbury, , ed. and trans. by S. E. Banks and James W. Binns, Oxford University Press, 2002, iii. 120, ‘Human Beings who Turn into Wolves’), this is shown to not be the case. In this narrative, de Pouget ‘devoured the young, and even mangled the old with savage bites’—Raimbaud de Pouget...

审阅者：

• 北欧冰岛文学中的狼人：怪物与人之间苏敏杰
• 克里斯·怀特

苏敏杰对挪威-冰岛文学和传奇中狼人的本质和角色提出了令人信服的论点。苏收集并研究了现存的挪威-冰岛狼人叙事，并通​​过许多有趣且多样化的视角来研究它们，从而得出了独特而全面的分析。

苏在整个文本结构中都这样做了，文本分为对构成中世纪狼人的各种主题的分析。这些来自外部：“狼人的皮肤”、“狼人的衣服和母狼”；内部：《狼人的风景与心境》、《狼人的目的》；并且相当巧妙地通过外在的内在化：“狼人的食物和食物禁忌”。这感觉像是一个自然的进展，让读者从狼人看似明显的“他者”——人到兽的身体转变——转向更复杂的内在“他者”——人作为人的心态-狼。

Su 的分析中一个特别有趣的部分是狼人和麻风病的并置，使用了 Susan Small 和 Didier Anzieu 的“皮肤自我”概念，Su 开发这个概念是为了对皮肤和麻风病的重要性进行全面的检查。它反映了中世纪挪威-冰岛文学中的内部现实。苏通过阅读 (. 1330) 将皮肤作为一种标识符进行分析来解决这一问题，通过这本书，她巧妙地展示了皮肤在社会接受和拒绝方面的重要性，展示了“皮肤如何引导”[结束第240页]这些叙述中来自内部的信息并为外部观察者提供线索，这“不仅改变了个人对自我的看法，也改变了他人对该个人的看法” （第 38-39 页）。

同样重要的是，苏采用了阈限概念作为对狼人在这些作品中的角色的潜在解释，采用了阿诺德·范·根内普、胜利·特纳和克洛德·列维-斯特劳斯的社会学理论，追踪了故事中情感的作用，以及这些可以揭示这些故事所源自的社会和文化。苏还采用了盖伊·德波 (Guy Debord) 的心理地理学理论，以及保罗·S·兰格斯拉格 (Paul S. Langeslag) 关于季节在心理地理学创作中所扮演的角色的研究。苏使用符号学方块来介绍和总结挪威-冰岛狼人叙事的思维景观，使人们能够轻松理解心理地理学在分析这些故事中的用途，并以易于理解的形式呈现苏的发现。另外值得注意的是，苏将“恶妇”这个角色塑造成一只隐喻的狼，一个有着美丽皮肤的怪物，与她（前）丈夫的外在怪物和内在人性形成鲜明对比。

我对苏作品的主要批评在于她在第三章“狼人的食物和食物禁忌”中提出的论点之一，其中她指出狼人“非常接近于品尝人类的血和肉……”[这]导致食人问题，这是一种将狼人与彻底的怪物联系起来的另类行为，[强调我的]”（第92页）。乍一看，这似乎是关于食物禁忌的合理立场，苏指出了 P. 肯尼思·希梅尔曼 (P. Kenneth Himmelman) 的话，他认为“看不见的食人行为在道德上可以被认为是可接受的”，以便证明这样一种观念是正确的，即一个狼人必须通过像狼一样生活来在某个时刻品尝人的血或肉（第92页）。但在另一个故事中，尽管并非起源于北欧冰岛语，但来自 Gervase of Tilbury's 的 Raimbaud de Pouget 的故事（Gervase of Tilbury，S. E. Banks 和 James W. Binns 编辑及译，牛津大学出版社，2002 年） ，iii. 120，“变成狼的人类”），事实证明情况并非如此。在这个叙述中，德·普热“吞噬了年轻人，甚至用野蛮的咬伤咬碎了老年人”——Raimbaud de Pouget……