Strength of Dragons (original) (raw)
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A mythological, astrological, literary, and iconographic theme of inextricable complexity, the dragon has lured many heroes, artists, and savants to unravel its meaning. This latest book, by Sara Kuehn, shows little explicit keenness to challenge or refute earlier attempts at interpretation, proposing instead a lucid synthesis through the presentation of an unparalleled wealth of material, yet by doing so, it supersedes a great deal of previous writing. Leaving aside for a moment the classification and interpretation of the dragon as offered by the book, the set of about 400 illustrations alone brings our understanding of the subject to a wholly new level. Monumental dragons from rarely visited and remote sites, barely visible and overlooked ones from what we believed to be well-known buildings, as well as hidden examples from the margins of manuscripts and the handles of metal vessels converge for the first time to strengthen the argument. If there is one major thesis in the volume, it might be that the student of a theme, as varied as the dragon, must keep the door open for many different and often contradictory explanations, in keeping with the multifarious nature of the subject itself. In her discussion of the dragon, Kuehn convincingly argues that the overriding characteristic of the motif is precisely its ambiguous nature. She shows that an emphasis on its ferocity and the consequent negative aspects would lead to a one-sided interpretation. By contextualising the ancient and mediaeval dragon– drawing, among others, on Calvert Watkins' linguistic reconstruction of the Indo-European dragon-slayer formula–, Kuehn arrives at the recognition that it mostly, if not always, reveals its destructive features in dualist schemes in which the creature often finds itself deterministically positioned so as to provoke its " evil " features to manifest. By revealing them, the dragon is forced further to enact the role of the necessary " other " , as it is played off against the hero who represents " our " side. Be it an embodiment of the untamed nature, illness, religious dissent, or politico-military opposition, the dragon of such dualist constructs will be duly defeated by the holder of just power. In addition to being a helpful vehicle for this conceptual othering whereby conflicts can be conveniently visualised and the participants identified, Kuehn demonstrates that the dragon displays inherent " positive " associations as well, hence its ambiguity. Just like the snake sheds its old skin, the dragon, a composite creature assimilating diverse zoomorphic features, can change its shape and
Victorian dragons: The reluctant brood
Children's Literature in Education, 1984
The dragon, so popular in modern fantasy, was rare in nineteenth-century writing. Indeed, few unnatural animals of any kind were to be found there. The fantasy beings that populated Victorian tales were overwhelmingly humanoid-ghosts, Doppelgangers {umlauted a}, mer-folk, fairies, witches, or magicians. Even when dragons became popular in nineteenth-century illustration, they were not yet popular in writing, and did not become so until the end of the century. Fantasy beings of all sorts, including dragons, had been absent from most eighteenth-century writing. Samuel Johnson in his "Preface to Shakespeare" condemned "adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments" as proper only to primitive and plebian tastes. In the nineteenth-century prose wonder tales, the adventures, giants, and enchantments returned, but not the dragons. Dragons were probably avoided because the idea of the dragon had acquired a specific religious and allegorical meaning, too obvious for subtle characterization, and too specifically Christian for use in secular tales. Secular literature demanded secular figures. Even when the underlying meanings were Christian, as in the tales of George MacDonald, the surface mythology was not. He used characters common in folklore: fairy godmothers and nature spirits rather than angels as supernatural guardians and wicked witches, fairies, goblins, and giants rather than demons as supernatural tempters. (Lilith, his last fantasy, with the opposition of Lilith and Adam, was the only one to make use of supernatural figures overtly Judeo-Christian.) The dragon, unlike such folklore-based figures as fairies, with their potential for both good and evil, had become rigidly fixed [p. 221] with a single, overtly religious meaning. It was the dragon of Milton, Spenser, and the book of Revelations: it was Satan and absolutely evil. This view of the dragon as evil goes back to antiquity, and the best known dragons of ancient myth reinforced the idea of the dragon as simply and utterly evil. But this stereotype of the dragon as evil distorted the animal's mythic nature. As Joseph L. Fontenrose shows in his Python, the dragon is an ambivalent creature. Hero and dragon change places easily, and the dragon has its kindly side: The Chinese dragons are in general benevolent and beneficient deities, who send rain and bring good crops. They also bring thunderstorms, tempests, whirlwinds, and floods. Like Zeus or Baal, they bring both good and bad weather; for the god, we should not forget, can send both good and evil upon mortal man. And at this point we should also realise that dragons and snakes did not have a uniformly bad reputation in Greece and the Near East. Greece too had its benevolent reptilian deities: snakes that were spirits of springs, genii loci, embodiments or attributes of gods, e.g., Asklepios, Athena, Apollo … Zeus himself. [side-note: Joseph L. Fontenrose, Python, A Study of Delphic Myth and its Origins, pp. 401-492] (The interchangeability of hero and dragon is further discussed in pp. 469-474 of this work.) The dragon's strength made the red dragon the symbol of Wales and Arthur's Britain. Despite the popular image of
1984
Discusses the revival of dragons in fantasy after a long hiatus (perhaps spurred by Victorian studies of dinosaur fossils), which both influenced and was further refined by Tolkien and Lewis, with a brief look at dragons in fantasy since their time.
Dragons: Myth and the Cosmic Powers
2014
This essay investigates the significance of dragon mythology in early civilizations. Three mythical dragons are be considered, Zhulong, Apep and Makara. These examples show that the symbol of the dragon represents a triune principle of generativity, vitality and knowledge.
“Dragons are Tricksy”: The Uncanny Dragons of Children’s Literature
2014
As early as the sixties, scholars of children's literature have noted a trend to soften and satirize the dragon for children. This disconnect with traditional dragons has been bemoaned as ruining the mythic and archetypal power of dragons. Yet there may be more potent dragons lurking in children’s literature than readily apparent, due to one significant aspect of traditional Western dragon-lore: the eerie feeling or mood cast by a dragon. The original dragons of Germanic lore, from which many children’s literature dragons descended, were not just large scary beasts, but they also created a distinctly unsettling atmosphere in their stories. Modern tamed and human-like children’s literature dragons borrow certain uncanny qualities from the older generations of dragon-lore to become potent, if not always life-threatening characters. In specific, two traits borrowed from the original lore inspire uncanny doubling with their human counterparts: the dragons’ intensely possessive gaze ...
The Evolution of the Western Dragon
The figure of the dragon seems to be magnetic for human imagination and flourishes even these days. In the present article I explore the biological and psychological reasons why dragons were initially created in the human mind. Although I focus on the Mediterranean dragon figure as it evolved over time, the theories I suggest here for the reasons for the creation of dragons hold globally. I discuss the origins of the dragon figure in snakes, explain the reasons for the various kinds of imagined dragons, and categorize the different dragon prototypes that developed in the Mediterranean region. This article provides basic information that can be the foundation for further study of the subject.