Half Man Half Beast

This book is an introduction to half man, half monster creatures, including the adlet, the beast of Gévaudan, the bogeyman, the Jé-rouges, the lobisomem, the loogaroo, the manticore, and other creatures.

When Maurice Podbrey arrived in Montreal from England to teach at the National Theatre School in the autumn of 1966, Canadian theatre was in ferment and the excitement of Expo '67 and Canada's centenary was in the air. By 1969, he had become founding artistic director of Montreal's Centaur Theatre and embarked on 28 successful seasons of theatre. This story of the Centaur and Podbrey's reflections on theatre--directing, acting and actors, theatre administration, teaching, the audience, and critics--spotlights Canada's remarkable cultural evolution over the last three decades.

When he died in 2004, Jacques Derrida left behind a vast legacy of unpublished material, much of it in the form of written lectures. With The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1, the University of Chicago Press inaugurates an ambitious series, edited by Geoffrey Bennington and Peggy Kamuf, translating these important works into English. The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume 1 launches the series with Derrida’s exploration of the persistent association of bestiality or animality with sovereignty. In this seminar from 2001–2002, Derrida continues his deconstruction of the traditional determinations of the human. The beast and the sovereign are connected, he contends, because neither animals nor kings are subject to the law—the sovereign stands above it, while the beast falls outside the law from below. He then traces this association through an astonishing array of texts, including La Fontaine’s fable “The Wolf and the Lamb,” Hobbes’s biblical sea monster in Leviathan, D. H. Lawrence’s poem “Snake,” Machiavelli’s Prince with its elaborate comparison of princes and foxes, a historical account of Louis XIV attending an elephant autopsy, and Rousseau’s evocation of werewolves in The Social Contract. Deleuze, Lacan, and Agamben also come into critical play as Derrida focuses in on questions of force, right, justice, and philosophical interpretations of the limits between man and animal.

The werewolf, or lycanthrope, is a human that can take an animal form or an animal that can take human form. Shape-shifters are prevalent in the legends of world cultures, including the Greek minotaur, Celtic selkies, Navajo skin-walkers, and more, dating back to the oldest myths from around the globe. Cave paintings from 25,000 years ago depict images of half-human half-animal figures. This thrilling volume is full of grisly tales as well as surprising scientific explanations for some werewolf anecdotes. Remarkable artwork, coupled with spooky fact boxes, aid in producing a truly eerie reading experience.

An interesting and lively book that contains articles on heros, villains, mythologists and mythological approaches.

A study of the relationship between architectural sculpture and myth in Classical Greece.

First Published in 1967. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.