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[radiantfracture]

(I mean, if you want to and you have nothing better to do.)

What are your favorite instances of dragons in literature?

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Comments

[highlyeccentric]

I enjoy the dragon that eats St Margaret!

[radiantfracture]

...tell me more...

[sovay]

What are your favorite instances of dragons in literature?

I would read anything with dragons in it as a child. My really formative ones were written by Anne McCaffrey (Pern), Laurence Yep (Dragon of the Lost Sea and sequels), Jane Yolen (Dragon's Blood, though not sequels), and Susan Fletcher (Dragon's Milk and Flight of the Dragon Kyn, Sign of the Dove although I wasn't crazy about it). I did not like Smaug because I did not like the greedy, devilish tradition of dragons, however magnificently realized. I did like Le Guin's dragons and liked them even more when she revisited them in the later Earthsea books. I have good memories of something called A Book Dragon by Donn Kushner, but have no idea how it would hold up. I don't know how E. Nesbit's The Book of Dragons would hold up, either, but I have been really amused to see that one of its stories has sort of entered the realm of generally accepted cat legend. Less formatively, Patricia A. McKillip's "The Harrowing of the Dragon of Hoarsbreath" has—as one would hope from the title—an excellent dragon; I don't like The Cygnet and the Firebird so much as a novel, but the dragons in it are very good. I'm sure others will come to mind. For example, Maur in Robin McKinley's The Hero and the Crown, which got around my resistance to malevolent dragons by being an astonishing incarnation of trauma. I stalled out halfway through Naomi Novik's Temeraire series, but that wasn't her dragons' fault. Graeme Base's The Discovery of Dragons is delightful. [edit] The dragon in Tanith Lee's "Draco, Draco" also made a great impression on me, because it was bestial and uncanny, and the story's twist on dragonslaying new to me.

[highlyeccentric]

Your standard probably-not-historical virgin saint: hot shepherdess devotes herself to god; Roman ruler sees her and decides to marry her; she refuses to marry a pagan; he throws her in jail.

Then SATAN APPEARS IN THE FORM OF A DRAGON and SWALLOWS HER

and she prays to god and BURSTS FORTH FROM THE DRAGON'S BELLY (which is why she's the patron saint of pregant women, eww). Satan reappears as a hot dude, and she makes him grovel at her feet.

Then she undergoes various other tortures at the hands of the evil roman, and is beheaded. People convert. The end.

My favourite version is John Lydgate's one (here), the more excitingly literary one is the Katherine Group version (which is in such weird early middle english that there's a translation whoo), and there's versions in practically every european language (many derive from something called The Golden Legend, originally in Latin, translated all over the place).

And most importantly there are REALLY COOL PICTURES.
Example a, for which I can't find an attribution but it looks 13th c to me, probably French.
Example b, a worryingly cute dragon from a psalter image of St Margaret

For some reason this fierce saint-eating dragon always looks pretty adorable in pictures.

[agoodwinsmith]

R.A. Macavoy, Tea With The Black Dragon, 1983

I don't remember much right now, and the book is still packed, but I do remember wishing I could meet the Black Dragon.

[juushika]

I really don't care about dragons—not my aesthetic, never imprinted on them when growing up, they're just not my thing—so I'm pretty fond of the few dragons in literature that have managed to overcome my disinterest:

Temeriare series by Naomi Novik. (The first book is fantastic and probably works as a stand-alone for the purposes of a class, despite that it's part of a much longer series.) Dragons here are a complete and unique sentient race operating alongside humans, and I love them as individuals, especially how their size, diet, and social structures operate inside and outside of human interaction and "civilization," and in interactions with humans, specifically what it means for two sentient races to interact when they are so profoundly different and one views the other as inhuman. I think it also does a good job of capturing that feeling of dragons as massive flighted beasts, that grandeur and awe and scale; not something I'm personally invested in, but I can see why others enjoy it.

Tooth and Claw by Jo Walton. This takes Victorian romance axioms/tropes and recasts them with huge sentient lizards; the interaction between dragon biology, instinct, culture, and social norms is super engaging. It almost makes more sense than similar social customs as they operate(d) in human culture, while also drawing attention the fact that these customs are social constructions. It's a playful book, but it was the physicality of the dragons that sold me, especially the danger that egg laying poses to female dragons.

ETA: in no way is an "unusual" dragon book: The Flight of Dragons by Peter Dickinson, illustrated by Wayne Anderson. This I did imprint on as a kid, and still love it; I'm a sucker for speculative evolution and similar books (like Dougal Dixon's Man after Man and After Man). The combo of soft science, playful illustrations, fantasy premise, and worldwide view (covering a diverse number of dragon origins and builds) really captured my imagination. I still have a lot of adult headcanons about dragon flight as a result of this book, even for instances of dragons that otherwise don't interest me at all.

[shewhomust]

Seconding those mentions of Ursula LeGuin and Peter Dickinson.

And since larryhammer was reminding me about U.A. Fanthorpe, her Not My Best Side.

[cmcmck]

Chrysophylax in Tolkein's 'Farmer Giles of Ham'.

[anne]

The Memoirs of Lady Trent series, by Marie Brennan, starting with A Natural History of Dragons. Secondary world, lady from "Victorian England" studies dragons and has adventures, writes her memoirs with the full benefit of hindsight. And the illustrations are genius.

[redbird]

Jo Walton says that one was prompted by a slightly confused conversation with her husband along the lines of "the problem with Trollope…[misunderstanding]is that he doesn't understand dragons" and the thought that no, Trollope understood dragons well enough, what he didn't understand was humans.

[jazzfish]

Ooh, yes.

[larryhammer]

The dragons of Earthsea, and Oolong from MacAvoy's Tea with the Black Dragon and sequel.

Not counting the origami dragons I have known (and, some of them, folded).

[jazzfish]

Yevaud, from UKL's A Wizard of Earthsea.

All the dragons but especially Kazul and the old dragon whose name escapes me, from Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Dealing With Dragons et seq).

Seconding Chrysophylax Dives, the cowardly (but very rich) worm from Tolkien's linguistic shaggy-dog story "Farmer Giles of Ham".

Speaking of Tolkien, Smaug as voiced by Richard Boone in the Rankin-Bass animated "The Hobbit."

(There are no dragons in John M. Ford's ahistorical epic The Dragon Waiting but heck with it, imma use the icon anyhow.)

[cmcmck]

I still rate him way higher than Smaug! :o)

[cmcmck]

And I forgot Errol, from Terry Pratchett's 'Guards Guards' :o)

[radiantfracture]

Um, this is completely awesome. I am exactly looking for some older texts to support the recent ones.

Thank you so much! These are fantastic leads.

I shall credit you as Key Researcher in my coursepack.

That first picture should definitely go on the slides.

I'd probably go with Lydgate as it's a more transparent read (and rhymes).

[radiantfracture]

Thank you! I believe I have a winter of delightful reading ahead of me.

I'd like to contrast depictions of dragons, so the variety is perfect. The short stories are very useful in that way.

I was thinking also of -- is it "St. Dragon and the George"? I don't know how that holds up.

Of the novels, I think I'll try to excerpt some scenes that will more or less easily come out more or less whole. Eustace in the cave, etc.

[radiantfracture]

A Twitter friend suggested this, too! I think I'll have to at least track down a copy.

What makes the dragon appealing?

[sovay]

All the dragons but especially Kazul and the old dragon whose name escapes me, from Wrede's Enchanted Forest Chronicles (Dealing With Dragons et seq).

YES.

(I knew I was forgetting something. I learned to make cherries jubilee because of those books.)

[radiantfracture]

Yes! I thought Temeraire was pretty delightful, and Tooth and Claw as well. Tooth and Claw would be a fun companion piece to the novels it takes off from. Maybe something on the marriage plot.

The dragon seems to feature often in crypto-natural-histories. Somehow we want to map the possibilities of dragons.

Do you have a favorite bit in "The Flight of Dragons"?

[radiantfracture]

That's lovely! And I think a pretty fair insight into Trollope. (Ducks)

[radiantfracture]

Ooh, neat one.

[radiantfracture]

I've just started reading these! Great fun.

[radiantfracture]

Well, now I want very much to hear about the origami dragons.

[radiantfracture]

I was just thinking I need a dragon icon for course creation.