SOURCE: "Transferral, Transformation, and the Act of Reading in Marie de France's 'Bisclavret'," in Romance Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 4, November, 1992, pp. 399-410.

In the following essay, Gertz uses reader response theory to explain the changes in our reactions that occur as we read "Bisclavret. "

Marie de France's twelfth-century lai "Bisclavret" invites its audiences to become immersed in its world, as Marie's disarmingly simple narrative style conveys complex, fantastic matter. Her framing of supernatural material in the standard plot of the betrayed husband creates a sense of encountering the familiar long before reaching the conclusion, partly because so little of the marvelous occupies the narrative presentation (as opposed to the material) of this merveille. Rather than heightening the strangeness or even the horror so obviously a potential focus of a werewolf story, Marie ironically insists on creating a very normal, human beast.

Eliciting standard expectations from this merveille about a...