Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast

In 1764 a peasant girl was killed and partially eaten while tending sheep. Eventually, over a hundred victims fell prey to a mysterious creature whose deadly efficiency mesmerized Europe. Monsters of the Gévaudan revisits this spellbinding tale and offers the definitive explanation for its mythic status in French folklore.

About the Author :
SmithJay M.: Jay M. Smith is John Van Seters Distinguished Term Professor of History, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Review :
[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 Gevaudan: 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 20110308 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 20110329 [Smith] turns the hunt for the Bete du Gevaudan 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 20110519 [Smith's] a skilled storyteller, bringing a distant time and place vividly to life for the reader. -- Nick Owchar Los Angeles Times 20110424 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 Gevaudan, a wolf-like monster that haunted imaginations everywhere in Europe and spread apocalyptic fear throughout the population of the Gevaudan, 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 Gevaudan 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 20110609 This is an impressive attempt to place the episode of the Gevaudan beast firmly in a wider frame...General readers as well as scholars will find [Smith's] analysis fascinating. -- William Doyle Literary Review 20110801