Charleston County Public Library

The dragon, fear and power, Martin Arnold

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 281-320) and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

The dragon

bibliography

1004758653

Martin Arnold

fear and power

Dragons are a global phenomenon, one that has troubled mankind for thousands of years. From the fire-breathing beasts of North European myth and legend to the Book of Revelation's Great Red Dragon of Hell, from those supernatural agencies of imperial authority in ancient China to those dragon-women posing a threat to male authority, dragons have a wide variety of forms and meanings. But there is one thing they all have in common: our fear of their formidable power and, as a consequence, our need to overcome them, to appease them or in some way to assume their power as our own. How can this be explained? Is it our need to impose order on chaos in the person of a dragon-slaying hero? Is it our terror of Nature unleashed in its most destructive form? Or is the dragon nothing less than an expression of that greatest and most disturbing mystery of all - our mortality? Martin Arnold traces the history of ideas about dragons, from the earliest of times to Game of Thrones, and asks what exactly it might be in our imaginations that appears to have necessitated such a creature

Introduction: the origin of dragons -- Dragons in Greek and Roman mythology -- Dragons in the Bible and saints' lives -- The Germanic dragon, Part 1: old Norse mythology and old English literature -- The Germanic dragon, Part 2: sagas of ancient times -- Dragons in beastiaries and Celtic mythology -- Asian and East Asian dragons -- Dragons in the anti-establishment folktale -- European dragons as fictions and facts: from medieval romance to the nursery dragon -- The old dragon revives: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis -- 'A wilderness of dragons' -- George R.R. Martin's dragons and the question of power -- Conclusion: the dragon and fear

adult