In recent years, shapeshifting characters in literature, film and television have been on the rise. This has followed the increased use of such characters as metaphors, with novelists and critics identifying specific meanings and topics behind them. This book aims to unravel the shapeshifting trope. Rather than pursue a case-based study, the works are grouped around specific themes--adolescence, gender, sexuality, race, disability, addiction, and spirituality--that are explored through the metaphor of shapeshifting. Because of the transformative possibilities of this metaphor and its flexibility, the shapeshifter has the potential to change how we see our world. With coverage of iconic fantasy texts and a focus on current works, the book engages with the shapeshifting figure in popular culture from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

In recent years, shapeshifting characters in literature, film and television have been on the rise. This has followed the increased use of such characters as metaphors, with novelists and critics identifying specific meanings and topics behind them. This book aims to unravel the shapeshifting trope. Rather than pursue a case-based study, the works are grouped around specific themes--adolescence, gender, sexuality, race, disability, addiction, and spirituality--that are explored through the metaphor of shapeshifting. Because of the transformative possibilities of this metaphor and its flexibility, the shapeshifter has the potential to change how we see our world. With coverage of iconic fantasy texts and a focus on current works, the book engages with the shapeshifting figure in popular culture from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Instructors considering this book for use in a course may request an examination copy here.

Examines the history of werewolf lore, famous incidents, and possible explanations.

Describes different kinds of shape-shifters, from the Japanese kitsune to the Irish selkies.

SHAPESHIFTERS are people with animal medicine, people who can connect with and use their animal powers. Those with access to this magical power can shift mentally, astrally, or even physically into their power animal or totem. Rosalyn Greene's ability to shift, both mentally and astrally, combined with her extensive study of the secret shapeshifting folklore, has resulted in this fascinating examination of all aspects and forms of shifting. This unique book helps you realize your potential for being a shapeshifter, giving detailed explanations about how the various forms of shifting occur. She shows you how to distinguish powerful visions, anxiety attacks, and imagination from real shifting, as well as how to recognize the warning signs of an imminent shift. Since there can be dangers and risks on both the mundane and psychic levels when you pursue the path of a shifter, many of the potential dangers associated with specific practices are carefully outlined. Shapeshifting is a spiritual journey, a very tough one, but very rewarding, linking us with both the fundamental power of animals and with the higher self. It has a purpose and reality far beyond simply using shifter abilities for earthly benefits; it can lead us through the unseen veil that separates us from our Selves.

Stories about ferocious werewolves killing everything in their paths have been around for thousands of years. Take young readers on a trip through time to learn about ancient and medieval lore about werewolves. Then explore how werewolf stories have changed over time until these monsters became the troubled and distant creatures often seen in today's popular culture.

There is something about a shapeshifter—a person who can transform into an animal—that captures our imagination; that causes us to want to howl at the moon, or flit through the night like a bat. Werewolves, vampires, demons, and other weird creatures appeal to our animal nature, our “dark side,” our desire to break free of the bonds of society and proper behavior. Real or imaginary, shapeshifters lurk deep in our psyches and remain formidable cultural icons. The myths, magic, and meaning surrounding shapeshifters are brought vividly to life in John B. Kachuba’s compelling and original cultural history. Rituals in early cultures worldwide seemingly allowed shamans, sorcerers, witches, and wizards to transform at will into animals and back again. Today, there are millions of people who believe that shapeshifters walk among us and may even be world leaders. Featuring a fantastic and ghoulish array of examples from history, literature, film, TV, and computer games, Shapeshifters explores our secret desire to become something other than human.

For thousands of years, people have believed that certain humans have the ability to turn into animals, particularly wolves. This book describes all kinds of shape-shifters, from the Japanese kitsune to the Irish selkies. The history of these fascinating characters is accompanied by vivid computer-generated illustrations that will capture the imagination and spark the curiosity of young readers.

Wolves lope across Gothic imagination. Signs of a pure animality opposed to humanity, in the figure of the werewolf they become liminal creatures that move between the human and the animal. Werewolves function as a site for exploring complex anxieties of difference – of gender, class, race, space, nation or sexuality – but the imaginative and ideological uses of wolves also reflect back on the lives of material animals, long persecuted in their declining habitats across the world. Werewolves therefore raise unsettling questions about the intersection of the real and the imaginary, the instability of human identities and the worldliness and political weight of the Gothic. This is the first volume concerned with the appearance of werewolves and wolves in literary and cultural texts from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Drawing on representations of werewolves and wolves in literature, film, television and visual culture, the essays investigate the key texts of the lycanthropic canon alongside lesser-known works from the 1890s to the present. The result is an innovative study that is both theoretically aware and historically nuanced, featuring an international list of established and emerging scholars based in Britain, Europe, North America and Australia.

In this fascinating book, Brian J. Frost presents the first full-scale survey of werewolf literature covering both fiction and nonfiction works. He identifies principal elements in the werewolf myth, considers various theories of the phenomenon of shapeshifting, surveys nonfiction books, and traces the myth from its origins in ancient superstitions to its modern representations in fantasy and horror fiction. Frost's analysis encompasses fanciful medieval beliefs, popular works by Victorian authors, scholarly treatises and medical papers, and short stories from pulp magazines of the 1930s and 1940s. Revealing the complex nature of the werewolf phenomenon and its tremendous and continuing influence, The Essential Guide to Werewolf Literature is destined to become a standard reference on the subject.