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Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast Hardcover – March 15, 2011
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In a brilliant, original rendition, Monsters of the Gévaudan revisits a spellbinding French tale that has captivated imaginations for over two hundred years, and offers the definitive explanation of the strange events that underlie this timeless story.
In 1764 a peasant girl was killed and partially eaten while tending a flock of sheep. Eventually, over a hundred victims fell prey to a mysterious creature, or creatures, whose cunning and deadly efficiency terrorized the region and mesmerized Europe. The fearsome aggressor quickly took on mythic status, and the beast of the Gévaudan passed into French folklore.
What species was this killer, why did it decapitate so many of its victims, and why did it prefer the flesh of women and children? Why did contemporaries assume that the beast was anything but a wolf, or a pack of wolves, as authorities eventually claimed, and why is the tale so often ignored in histories of the ancien régime? Smith finds the answer to these last two questions in an accident of timing. The beast was bound to be perceived as strange and anomalous because its ravages coincided with the emergence of modernity itself.
Expertly situated within the social, intellectual, cultural, and political currents of French life in the 1760s, Monsters of the Gévaudan will engage a wide range of readers with both its recasting of the beast narrative and its compelling insights into the allure of the monstrous in historical memory.
- Print length392 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherHarvard University Press
- Publication dateMarch 15, 2011
- Dimensions6 x 1 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100674047168
- ISBN-13978-0674047167
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Editorial Reviews
Review
“Every now and then a work of history comes along that pierces through the clouds of both professional and so-called public history to create the best in historical scholarship with an edge or mood of mystery. Smith's Monsters may be just such a book! Beautifully constructed and precise, it will thrill readers.”―Orest Ranum, Johns Hopkins University
“[Smith argues that] the attacks are a locus wherein we can witness the transition from early modernity to modernity itself. In other words, rather than being simply a remnant of backwards superstition, the "beast" was made possible by an emerging news and media culture (mainly in the form of periodicals), a relatively nascent but increasingly vigorous scientific naturalism associated with the Enlightenment, and religious and political unrest and controversy, much of which foreshadows the revolution that would begin in 1790 and usher in the modern world...Will Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast settle the debate about the nature of "the beast" for those interested in this strange historical episode? Almost certainly not, but the study should go a long way toward rescuing it both from oddball conjecture and contemptuous dismissal as a subject of serious inquiry.”―James Williams, PopMatters
“In 1764, as the Enlightenment dawned over Paris, a series of terrible killings in central France gave birth to a mystery that has endured for centuries. Jay M. Smith's penetrating work of history revisits a cultural turning point in which stories of werewolves competed for attention with groundbreaking works of science.”―Barnes & Noble Review
“As riveting a read as the best of detective stories, Smith's book on the beast of Gévaudan is also an important chapter in the political, cultural, and intellectual history of late eighteenth-century France.”―Dale K. Van Kley, author of The Religious Origins of the French Revolution
“This stunning work has much to teach us, not only about the origins of political and scientific modernity, but also about the curious historical processes by which we remember, and forget, the passions of the past.”―Jeffrey S. Ravel, author of The Would-Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder and Justice in Seventeenth-Century France
“[Smith] turns the hunt for the Bête du Gévaudan and its mythologization by the European press into a tale of collective psychosis, patronizing aristocrats and misunderstood peasants; he recounts the decline of the credulity and the rise of skepticism, and the construction of one of the first national news stories...Smith has performed a valuable service by so thoroughly researching a story that has produced reams of mediocre fantasizing about bizarre hybrids, prehistoric survivals and serial killers in costume. He forces the beast to say everything it possibly can about the period.”―Graham Robb, London Review of Books
“[Smith's] a skilled storyteller, bringing a distant time and place vividly to life for the reader.”―Nick Owchar, Los Angeles Times
“Aberrations--the collective kind composed of panic and delusions--cannot simply happen in a causeless void, but as happenings they are a challenge to historians. Jay M. Smith has taken up the challenge in a book about the beast of the Gévaudan, a wolf-like monster that haunted imaginations everywhere in Europe and spread apocalyptic fear throughout the population of the Gévaudan, a remote, mountainous region in southern France in 1764 and 1765...Smith demonstrates that the noblemen and educated clerics of the region outdid the peasants in their fanciful accounts of the killings. Crudely illustrated broadsheets featuring horrific scenes of the monster mauling helpless maids hardly serve as evidence of a culture peculiar to the common people. They circulated among all social classes...What to make of it all--a passing episode or a revealing segment of sociocultural history? Jay Smith makes a convincing case for the latter. By carefully examining every aspect of the events, he demonstrates how disparate elements came together to create a spectacular case of collective false consciousness. The beast, he shows, was something people were drawn to think about, and the trains of thought led through a rich and varied mental landscape. In the end, the crucial factor may have been the media--word of mouth at first, then letters, newspaper articles, and a flood of engravings and broadsheets...Mythology has cohabited with history since the days of ancient Greece, and they still have a lot to learn from each other. The beast of the Gévaudan may not deserve a place beside the Minotaur, but it has enriched the stock of monsters that populate our imaginations. Having once been good for fantasy, it now is good for making history.”―Robert Darnton, New York Review of Books
“This is an impressive attempt to place the episode of the Gévaudan beast firmly in a wider frame...General readers as well as scholars will find [Smith's] analysis fascinating.”―William Doyle, Literary Review
Review
-- James R. Farr, Purdue University
Every now and then a work of history comes along that pierces through the clouds of both professional and so-called public history to create the best in historical scholarship with an edge or mood of mystery. Smith's Monsters may be just such a book! Beautifully constructed and precise, it will thrill readers.
-- Orest Ranum, Johns Hopkins University
[Smith argues that] the attacks are a locus wherein we can witness the transition from early modernity to modernity itself. In other words, rather than being simply a remnant of backwards superstition, the "beast" was made possible by an emerging news and media culture (mainly in the form of periodicals), a relatively nascent but increasingly vigorous scientific naturalism associated with the Enlightenment, and religious and political unrest and controversy, much of which foreshadows the revolution that would begin in 1790 and usher in the modern world...Will Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast settle the debate about the nature of "the beast" for those interested in this strange historical episode? Almost certainly not, but the study should go a long way toward rescuing it both from oddball conjecture and contemptuous dismissal as a subject of serious inquiry.
-- James Williams PopMatters
In 1764, as the Enlightenment dawned over Paris, a series of terrible killings in central France gave birth to a mystery that has endured for centuries. Jay M. Smith's penetrating work of history revisits a cultural turning point in which stories of werewolves competed for attention with groundbreaking works of science.
-- Barnes & Noble Review
As riveting a read as the best of detective stories, Smith's book on the beast of Gévaudan is also an important chapter in the political, cultural, and intellectual history of late eighteenth-century France.
-- Dale K. Van Kley, author of The Religious Origins of the French Revolution
This stunning work has much to teach us, not only about the origins of political and scientific modernity, but also about the curious historical processes by which we remember, and forget, the passions of the past.
-- Jeffrey S. Ravel, author of The Would-Be Commoner: A Tale of Deception, Murder and Justice in Seventeenth-Century France
[Smith] turns the hunt for the Bête du Gévaudan and its mythologization by the European press into a tale of collective psychosis, patronizing aristocrats and misunderstood peasants; he recounts the decline of the credulity and the rise of skepticism, and the construction of one of the first national news stories...Smith has performed a valuable service by so thoroughly researching a story that has produced reams of mediocre fantasizing about bizarre hybrids, prehistoric survivals and serial killers in costume. He forces the beast to say everything it possibly can about the period.
-- Graham Robb London Review of Books
[Smith's] a skilled storyteller, bringing a distant time and place vividly to life for the reader.
-- Nick Owchar Los Angeles Times
Aberrations--the collective kind composed of panic and delusions--cannot simply happen in a causeless void, but as happenings they are a challenge to historians. Jay M. Smith has taken up the challenge in a book about the beast of the Gévaudan, a wolf-like monster that haunted imaginations everywhere in Europe and spread apocalyptic fear throughout the population of the Gévaudan, a remote, mountainous region in southern France in 1764 and 1765...Smith demonstrates that the noblemen and educated clerics of the region outdid the peasants in their fanciful accounts of the killings. Crudely illustrated broadsheets featuring horrific scenes of the monster mauling helpless maids hardly serve as evidence of a culture peculiar to the common people. They circulated among all social classes...What to make of it all--a passing episode or a revealing segment of sociocultural history? Jay Smith makes a convincing case for the latter. By carefully examining every aspect of the events, he demonstrates how disparate elements came together to create a spectacular case of collective false consciousness. The beast, he shows, was something people were drawn to think about, and the trains of thought led through a rich and varied mental landscape. In the end, the crucial factor may have been the media--word of mouth at first, then letters, newspaper articles, and a flood of engravings and broadsheets...Mythology has cohabited with history since the days of ancient Greece, and they still have a lot to learn from each other. The beast of the Gévaudan may not deserve a place beside the Minotaur, but it has enriched the stock of monsters that populate our imaginations. Having once been good for fantasy, it now is good for making history.
-- Robert Darnton New York Review of Books
This is an impressive attempt to place the episode of the Gévaudan beast firmly in a wider frame...General readers as well as scholars will find [Smith's] analysis fascinating.
-- William Doyle Literary Review
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Harvard University Press; 1st edition (March 15, 2011)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 392 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0674047168
- ISBN-13 : 978-0674047167
- Item Weight : 1.72 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 1 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,667,452 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,123 in Historiography (Books)
- #3,058 in French History (Books)
- #4,031 in Folklore & Mythology Studies
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Jay M. Smith teaches French and European history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
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While Smith works to dispel much of the mythology surrounding the Beast, I think it's difficult to take the mystery out of this story. It may be scientifically feasible that wolves act/acted in this way, but perhaps we suffer from cognitive dissonance in this case. It doesn't seem like wolves behave this way. It feels like something strange happened in France in the waning days of its monarchy, and while a mystery like this is horrifying, it also probes those recesses of imagination that you used to feel when you were a kid. Looking out in the darkness and wondering what might be looking back.
So as much as Smith admirably works to bring this story to a resolution, I think he is working against a mythology that some readers of this book openly embrace and accept. These readers don't want a resolution--but if you count yourself among those readers don't be dissuaded from reading this book. It is excellent and will do little to dispel the mystery, in my opinion. And if you don't speak/read French, then I doubt you'll find a better book on the topic.
I suspect Smith is as big a werewolf fan as the rest of us.
Top reviews from other countries
Nicht so hier. Smith geht davon aus, das es sich um ganz gewöhnliche Wolfsangriffe handelt, wie sie in Frankreich zu der Zeit üblich waren. Die Frage nach der Identität der Bestie ist für ihn aber relativ nachrangig. Ihm geht es darum zu zeigen, wie und warum Politiker, Militärs, Kirchenvertreter und die Medien ein Ungeheuer konstruiert haben.
Er behandelt das Thema chronologisch, bringt aber immer wieder Einschübe zur Gesellschaft Frankreichs am Vorabend der Revolution. Man erfährt sehr interessantes z.b. über die entstehende Presselandschaft, die religiösen Unruhen oder das angeschlagene Selbstbewusstsein der französischen Armee.
Wer sich vorher noch nie mit "La bete du Gevaudan" beschäftigt hat sollte sich vlt. erst einmal eine klassische Darstellung ansehen, ich denke nämlich nur mit Smith könnte es schwierig sein, der "Handlung" zu folgen. Auf jeden Fall versteht man dann besser, wogegen er unausgesprochen anargumentiert.
The sheer depth of research and grasp is gorgeous. Jay M Smith seems, unless he is inventing it all[!], to have got into the mindset of local French country people 200 years ago [at a time of fundamental shifts in the way people thought] quite miraculously.
AND ... it's hugely well written.
Pity I can only give it 5 stars.
While in the modern age, we are used to the idea that wolves generally shun people and are mostly harmless, Smith shows that in the past, the reality has sometimes been very different, and while the numbers are not certain, given the nature of the events and record, he cites a number of estimates of human fatalities in France in the 17th and 18th centuries running to as many as 9,000 deaths.
The structure of the book follows the efforts of various hunters, starting with the efforts of Duhamel the soldier, a rather attractive, diligent figure who wanted to liberate the people of the area from this terrifying animal, through the less sympathetic Norman hunting team of the d'Ennevals to the again more likeable figure of the king's "Arquebus-bearer", François Antoine. We also hear about efforts of "local hero" Jean Chastel.
Smith shows that the Beast was a news phenomenon of the age, publicised in the emergent mass-media of the time, the printed press. By referring to the primary sources, both the media reports and the correspondence of the participants in the events, Smith makes a convincing case for a natural and unexceptional series of events, i.e. a series of ordinary wolf attacks on isolated or physically less powerful and therefore vulnerable individuals, i.e. generally children, adolescents or women, who were generally unarmed.
We see how the harsh nature of the terrain in the Gévaudan region favoured livestock rather than arable farming, so that lone humans could easily encounter wolves while guarding their animals.
We also see how, a sensation having been created, the people of the time sought "exceptional" explanations, such as the surprisingly persistent idea that a hyena was rampaging through the countryside (perhaps more odd to us today as we know this creature primarily as a scavenger rather than a predator), that there might be a hybrid animal, or even a monkey. Others at the time believed that a werewolf might be to blame.
Indeed, the ferocity of the assaults is genuinely surprising to the modern reader, and for a peasant alone with his or her sheep in the hills, with little economic choice as to whether to take the sheep to pasture, this must have been at terrifying time.
The author shines a bright light onto 18th century French society. The malnutrition of the common people, the nobles' retention of the right to bear firearms, the structures of local and national government and the interaction between central government and the periphery.
In addition to the impact of the media, the author also points out that France was in the immediate aftermath of the terrible defeat in the Seven Years War. Britain has comprehensively defeated France in the naval & colonial spheres, Prussia in near Europe, and the Beast gave an avenue for redemption of honour for the elite. If the Beast could be portrayed as exceptional, a monster, then one could "go to war" against it. We see mass hunts with the quality of military expeditions.
Ultimately, however, the elite appear to have realised that this was "just a wolf", and there was an effort by the government to treat these events as less newsworthy.
Equally, to give them credit (and posterity tends not to give the French ruling classes much credit in the last few decades of ancien régime France), there appears to have been a realisation that wolf infestation was a major problem in rural France, a genuine hazard to life and limb. Consequently, concerted efforts had to be made to exterminate them. While we tend to see the pre-Revolution French ruling class as a rather unsympathetic group nowadays, some of them do seem to have at least taken a somewhat protective attitude to the peasantry, albeit not to the extent of sharing the nation's wealth or the vote with them!
Smith is a history professor at North Carolina University, and the publisher is Harvard University Press, but this book is not a dry tome of academic history: it is certainly scholarly, but written in a lively and engaging style. Do not expect sensationalism, but if you are interested in a thoughtful reconstruction of a series of events in 18th century France, or indeed just the history of man's relationship with the wolf, this is a very fine piece of work.