Abstract/Summary

The rewriting of any myth is always underpinned by a tension between continuity and rupture. Thus, although the figure of the werewolf will always be a metaphor for otherness and existential duality, it can also embody polarities of a philosophical, cultural, social and political kind that are determined by the epoch in which it is inscribed. Two recent novels, David Monteagudo’s Brañaganda, and Carles Terès, Licantropia have inscribed the werewolf myth in the present day. This study explores the extent to which these works either conserve or diverge from tradition in their configuration of the monster, and how this is mediated in turn by the by the creature’s awareness of its own hybrid nature and of the horror it instils.