Introducing the Medieval Dragon

Thomas Honegger

• Publisher: University of Wales Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786834706
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Europäische Geschichte des Mittelalters

The aim of this book is to explore the characteristics of the medieval dragon and discuss the sometimes differing views found in the relevant medieval text types. Based on an intimate knowledge of the primary texts, the study presents new interpretations of well-known literary works, and also takes into consideration paintings and other depictions of these beasts. Dragons were designed not only to frighten but also to fire the imagination, and provide a suitably huge and evil creature for the hero to overcome – yet there is far more to them than reptilian adversaries. This book introduces the medieval dragon via brief, accurate and clear chapters on its natural history, religion, literature and folklore, and concludes with how the dragon – from Beowulf to Tolkien, Disney and Potter – is constantly revived.

ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION

1 Text and translation are quoted (by permission) from Benjamin Slade (ed. and trans.), Beowulf: Diacritically Marked Text and Facing Translation, http://www.heorot.dk/beo-intro-rede.html, 2002–12 (accessed 25 August 2018). All subsequent quotes and references are to this edition and translation.

2 Quoted in Tom A. Shippey, Poems of Wisdom and Learning in Old English (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1976), pp. 76–7.

3 The Old Norse original ‘Hann fnýsti eitri alla leið fyrir sik fram’ (Völsunga Saga, ed. Guðni Jónsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson, http://heimskringla.no/wiki/Völsunga_saga (accessed 24 July 2018)) is rendered by Jesse L. Byock (ed. and trans.), The Saga of the Volsungs (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990), p. 63 as ‘He (the dragon) blew poison (eitr) over all the path before him.’

4 The usually very accurate and philologically faithful translation by Gerhard Nickel gives the following version: ‘Sie sahen viele Schlangenarten (wyrmcynnes) und seltsame Seedrachen (sædracan) sich überall in den Fluten tummeln sowie auf den Uferklippen Ungeheuer (nicras), Drachen (wyrmas) und wilde Tiere (wildeor) liegen, die so oft am Morgen unheilbringende Fahrten aufs Meer hinaus unternehmen.’ J. Klegraf, W. Kühlwein, D. Nehls and R. Zimmermann (eds), Beowulf und die kleineren Denkmäler der altenglischen Heldensage Waldere und Finnsburg. 1. Teil: Text, Übersetzung und Stammtafeln (Heidelberg: Carl Winter, 1976), p. 89 (italics mine).

5 Bosworth and Toller, in their An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, give the following translations: wyrmcyn: a reptile, serpent, a creeping insect, a worm; nicor (pl. nicras): a hippopotamus, a water-monster, cf. Icelandic nykr = a sea goblin; a hippopotamus; OHG nichus = a crocodile; sædracan: a sea-dragon, sea-serpent; wyrm: a reptile, serpent (but it also means, specifically for Beowulf 2287ff, the fire-drake); wildeor: a wild beast. See Joseph Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, ed. Thomas Northcote Toller (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1898), http://bosworth.ff.cuni.cz (accessed 25 June 2018).

6 During his swimming contest with Brecca, Beowulf slays nine niceras (Beowulf, l. 575).

7 Semasiology is a linguistic sub-discipline that takes the word as the starting point for its inquiry into its meaning, i.e. asking ‘What does X mean?’ It thus stands in contrast to onomasiology that starts with the object, i.e. asking ‘What is the name of X?’

8 Quoted in Bosworth, An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, s.v. hran.

9 See Kathryn Hume, ‘From Saga to Romance: The Use of Monsters in Old Norse Literature’, Studies in Philology, 77 (1980), 1–25 and Thomas Honegger, ‘Draco litterarius: Some Thoughts on an Imaginary Beast’, in Sabine Obermaier (ed.), Tiere und Fabelwesen im Mittelalter (Berlin and New York: Walter de Gruyter, 2009), pp. 133–45.

10 This point is beautifully illustrated in Lewis Carroll’s nonsense-poem ‘Jabberwocky’ (in his 1871 Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There), which seems to describe a dragon-like monstrous creature.

11 Already Edward Topsell, in his The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents, commented: ‘There be some dragons which have wings and no feet, some again have both feet and wings, and some neither feet nor wings, but are only distinguished from the common sort of Serpents by the combe growing upon their heads, and the beard under their cheeks’ (Edward Topsell, The History of Four-footed Beasts and Serpents (London: Printed by E. Cotes, 1658), p. 705). This observation has been confirmed by Samantha Riches, who made the most comprehensive study to date of the depiction of the dragons in the Saint George tradition, and who comments on the great variety of forms in which the dragons are depicted. See Samantha J. Riches, St George. Hero, Martyr and Myth (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 2000), p. 153.

12 See Qiguang Zhao, A Study of Dragons, East and West, Asian Thought and Culture 11 (New York: Peter Lang, 1992) for an in-depth study of the Asian and especially the Chinese dragon.

13 See also the discussion of the encyclopaedic tradition in the chapter ‘The Dragon and Medieval Scholarship’.

14 Friedhelm Schneidewind, Drachen. Das Schmöcker-Lexikon (Saarbrücken: Verlag der Villa Fledermaus, 2008), pp. 81–5, provides a useful overview.

15 See also Carl Sagan, The Dragons of Eden (New York: Random House, 1977), where he argues that dragons developed out of early man’s fear of reptiles in particular.

16 XII.iv.4 in Isidore of Seville, The Etymologies of Isidore of Seville, ed. and trans. Stephen A. Barney, W. J. Lewis, J. A. Beach and Oliver Berhof, in collaboration with Muriel Hall (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 255.

17 See, for example, the fossilized skeleton of the armoured dinosaur found by miners in Canada in 2011, https://www.nationalgeographic.com/magazine/2017/06/dinosaur-nodosaur-fossil-discovery/ (accessed 18 July 2018).

18 See Thomas Honegger, ‘From Bestiary onto Screen: Dragons in Film’, in Renate Bauer and Ulrike Krischke (eds), Fact and Fiction: From the Middle Ages to Modern Times. Essays Presented to Hans Sauer on the Occasion of his 65th Birthday, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Englischen Philologie 37 (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011), pp. 197–215, for an in-depth discussion of dragons and their modern counterparts in films.

19 See Daniel Ogden, Dragons, Serpents, and Slayers in the Classical and Early Christian Worlds. A Sourcebook (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) for an in-depth documentation of the Greek and Roman accounts of dragons and dragon-like monsters.

20 See Psalm 73 (74):13–14 and Isaiah 27:1. The lengthy poetic description of Leviathan in Job 41 characterizes it as a dragon-like creature and pays particular attention to its ‘fiery’ aspects: ‘(18) By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. (19) Out of his mouth go burning lamps, and sparks of fire leap out. (20) Out of his nostrils goeth smoke, as out of a seething pot or caldron. (21) His breath kindleth coals, and a flame goeth out of his mouth.’ All quotes from and references to the Bible in English are from the critical scholarly edition of the King James Version (KJV) available at https://www.academic-bible.com (accessed 24 July 2018).

THE DRAGON AND MEDIEVAL SCHOLARSHIP

1 The table is taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systema_Naturae#/media/File:Linnaeus_-_Regnum_Animale_(1735).png (accessed 18 July 2018).

2 Topsell’s work is readily available online in form of the 1658 reprint of the two volumes The History of Four-footed Beasts (1607) and The History of Serpents (1608) under the title The History of Four-Footed Beasts (1658) (see https://archive.org/details/historyoffourfoo00tops (accessed 18 July 2018)). The chapter on the dragon can be found on pp. 701–16.

3 See my entry on ‘Zoology’ in the Routledge Medieval Encyclopedia Online (forthcoming). For the development of the dragon in zoological literature in connection with Gessner’s Schlangenbuch (‘Book on Snakes’), see the excellent study by Phil Senter, Uta Mattox and Eid E. Haddad, ‘Snake to Monster: Conrad Gessner’s Schlangenbuch and the Evolution of the Dragon in the Literature of Natural History’, Journal of Folklore Research, 53/1 (2016), 67–124.

4 John Trevisa, On the Properties of Things. John Trevisa’s translation of Bartholomaeus Anglicus De Proprietatibus Rerum, ed. M. Seymour et al., 3 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, vols I and II Text: 1975, vol. III Commentary: 1988), p. 1093.

5 The pelican is one of the birds found in the original Physiologus; see Otto Seel (ed. and trans.), Der Physiologus (Zurich: Artemis, 1992), pp. 10–11, and Michael J. Curley (ed. and trans.), Physiologus. A Medieval Book of Nature Lore (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1979, repr. 2009), pp. 9–10.

6 Terence Hanbury White (ed. and trans.), The Book of Beasts. Being a Translation from a Latin Bestiary of the Twelfth Century (1st edn 1954; Stroud: Alan Sutton, 1992), pp. 132–3.

7 The concept of the Book of Nature is based upon the assumption that the created universe is as much the work of God as is the Bible – and, with the proper training, it can be ‘read’ (i.e. interpreted) not unlike a text from the Holy Scripture.

8 White (ed. and trans.), The Book of Beasts, p. 244.

9 The translation is from Augustinus, Expositions on the Psalms, compiled by Ted Hildebrand (online source, 2007), and the original...