The Medieval Dragon: The Nature of the Beast in Germanic Literature

by Joyce Tally Lionarons

Overview

The popular fascination with dragons and dragon slayers is manifest in the endlessly repeated plots of sword-and-sorcery romances and in the mass-produced artwork that illustrates their fantastical characters and themes. Yet the image of a knight in shining armour who fights a solitary battle against a winged, fire-breathing dragon in order to win the hand of a fair maiden is more common in modern popular culture than in medieval literary fiction. Applying modern theoretical literary perspectives to medieval heroic sagas to investigate the concept of draconitas or ‘dragonness’, The Medieval Dragon investigates the nature and characteristics of Germanic literary dragons and dragon slayings as they relate to contemporary ideas about myth and narratological theory. Examining how dragons are portrayed in the epic masterworks, Beowulf (Old English), Vǫlsunga saga (Icelandic), Das Nibelungenlied (Middle High German), and þiðrekr saga af Bern (Old Norwegian), Joyce Tally Lionarons explores the relationship between the dragons of medieval Germanic literature and the chaos monsters of Indo-European myth, while searching for the reasons behind the often uncanny similarity between the dragons and their antagonists, the dragon-slayers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781860571619
Publisher:	Welsh Academic Press
Publication date:	10/17/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook

About the Author

Joyce Tally Lionarons, retired Professor of Medieval Literature at Ursinus College, Pennsylvania, is author of The Homiletic Writings of Archbishop Wulfstan (Boydell&Brewer) and editor of Old English Literature in its Manuscript Context (University of West Virginia Press).

Table of Contents

Preface 1. Dragons and Dragon-Slayers 2. Beowulf and the Beowulf Dragon 3. Fáfnir 4. Sîfrit 5. A Wilderness of Dragons 6. Conclusion Notes Bibliography Index

Editorial Reviews

A quest with two goals: to demonstrate that it is possible to apply contemporary narrative theory to medieval heroic literature, and to delineate the characteristics of a dragon such that it can be distinguished from Godzilla. The two paths taken are the relationship between the German dragons and the chaos monster of Indo-European myth, and the often uncanny resemblance between dragons and the dragon-slayers who are their antagonists. Distributed in the US by ISBS. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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