The following abstract was submitted to the South Central Modern Language Association conference in 2009, and was accepted. As I recall, the paper for which it is an abstract was presented in the Fantasy and Science Fiction panel.
The hybridization of humans and wolves appears in folktales and literatures across cultures and centuries. In many cases, the hybridization occurs within a single entity, as in the werewolf of European folklore or the gestalt creature of science fiction fame, and in just as many cases, the hybridized human/wolf is featured in an antagonistic role.
Contemporary fantasy fiction demonstrates movement in the lupine/human hybrid away from the commonplaces of single-body and antagonist. The Farseer and Tawny Man trilogies of Robin Hobb, the Wheel of Time cycle of the late Robert Jordan, and the Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin all feature bonded humans and wolves, each partaking in some measure of the nature of the others while remaining separate beings, and each figured as a protagonist or as the principal protagonist—although it cannot be said that the characters in question are accepted in their societies. Notably, all three authors portray their human/wolf bonds as psychic projections; dream, sensation, and thought are shared between wolf and man, and in some cases those projections cross the border between life and death.
In all three cases, the projection of wolf into man and man into wolf serves to engage and subvert the traditional Western European association of the wolf with savagery; while the animals remain animals and the humans human, the humans are more bestial and the animals more humane than is often depicted.