Monsters of the Gevaudan

by Smith, Jay M.

• ISBN13: 9780674047167
• ISBN10: 0674047168
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-03-15
• Publisher: Harvard Univ Pr

Summary

In a brilliant, original rendition, Monsters of the Geacute;vaudan 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 Geacute;vaudan 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 reacute;gime? 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 Geacute;vaudan 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.

Table of Contents

Introduction: The Beast and its World	p. 1
Sounding the Alarm	p. 7
Monsters Real and Imagined	p. 27
Digesting Defeat	p. 60
A Star is Born	p. 107
The Perils of Publicity	p. 138
Heroes and Skeptics	p. 159
Exaggerated Expectations and Extraordinary Endings	p. 195
Narrative Echoes Past and Present	p. 227
Conclusion: The Beast in History	p. 270
Notes	p. 285
Note on Place Names	p. 355
Note on Sources	p. 357
Acknowledgments	p. 361
Index	p. 365
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