(Image taken by me outside of Ulm Cathedral in Ulm, Germany)
With St. George and the Dragon, we get the dragon slaying narrative that's more familiar to a modern audience. The TEAMS text introduction does a fair job of plotting the nature of how this tradition has changed, shifting the strictly martyrdom story we had in The Martyrdom of St. George to a rather familiar episode of a city beset by a dragon, villagers who offer kine and eventually their own children as offering to appease said dragon, and a hero coming in to save the day by defeating the dragon, even directly saving the life a beautiful young princess in the process. The TEAMS introduction mentions that there is some scholarship suggesting that dragon slaying narratives in hagiography are really about the defeating of pagan religions, which is interesting when comparing the two St. George poems contained in this volume, but what stands out more to me is the similarity this narrative bears to romance, to the point of only tangentially operating as a saints' life.
In sheer volume alone, the text of this poem is more interested in the city, Gylena, and the dragon besetting it than St. George, less than half of the 130 line poem involving St. George. Furthermore, as a hagiographical poem, this text is odd in that George's only real miracle is the taming of dragon, and that may have as much to do with the maiden's placing of her girdle on the dragon's neck (although at George's instruction), tying to other narratives of maiden's virginal powers over wild beasts and the sexual undertones that follow. In fact, if one were to replace the conversion narrative at the end of the poem with the knight marrying the daughter of the king, who has already been offered as prize for defeating the dragon, this text would read more as an episode from Mallory. If anything, St. George and the Dragon reads like a short romance disguised as a saint's life.
When comparing The Martyrdom of St. George and St. George and the Dragon, one differing aspect of the saint himself his activeness/agency in his given narrative. For the Martyrdom, St. George is, like many martyred saints, a figure who is active in the pronouncement and loyalty to his faith but passive in accepting his torture (although this general observation may be part of a larger lack of familiarity with Middle English saint's lives, so I will be reevaluating this perception often throughout my exam reading). St. George and the Dragon, on the other hand, finds the saint coming upon a problem, facing it down, and bringing an entire city to conversion. Rather than acting as the martyr whose sacrifice is demonstrative of his or her fate, the St. George who faces the dragon actively employs his strength of will. It is then, perhaps, little wonder that it is this tradition for the saint that is embraced by soldiers and knights; as a step away from being a heroic knight himself, George is an example of not how to die well but how to use one's faith as a weapon to tame, and then slay, your enemies.
Have you read Susan Crane's Insular Romance yet? This blog post would be very interesting in light of her scholarship on hagiographic romances.
ReplyDeleteHmmm. No I have not, and I just realized that somehow I managed not to have any Susan Crane on my list (not sure how that happened). At a later date, or if I have time, I may try to briefly return to this in light of her work.
ReplyDeleteAs I've stated before, hagiography is something of a blind spot for me, so I need to get up to speed.