INTRODUCTION
Dragons are a hot property these days--literally hot, those fire-breathing beasts. Disney’s Sleeping Beauty (1959), one of its classic fairy-tale animations, included a dragon, even though one doesn’t appear in Charles Perrault’s version on which the film is based. This dragon was so popular that it will reprise its role in the 2014 sequel Maleficent. George R. R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series stars the “mother of dragons,” Daenerys Targaryen, who plays a very visual role in HBO’s Game of Thrones series. Not to get all puffed up about it, but dragons rule, for pete’s sake!
But we shouldn’t be surprised that dragons have haunted and hounded fairy tales and fantasies. They are part of mythology, not just dragon lore. On April 23 (yes, Shakespeare’s birthday) England celebrates St. George’s Day. King Lear states: “Come not between the dragon and his wrath,” though the patron saint of England, St. George, does just that--slaying a dragon and rescuing a princess in one fell swoop, thus setting in motion a dragon-motif at the heart of numerous fairy tales. Even earlier in literary history, Grendel and his mother couldn’t defeat Beowulf, but a dragon could. Smaug tried, but his Achilles scale was his downfall in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. And we at St. Norbert College have an allegiance to Hagrid’s dragon Norbert in the Harry Potter series.
As I Wait for the Dragon to Roast Me: Twenty-Five Tales to Read While Anticipating a Most Fantastical Demise is a collection of original fairy tales from the Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales class at St. Norbert College. To prepare for their tales, the students read a variety of fairy tales ranging from the classics--Perrault, the Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen--to the Victorian and Edwardian masters--Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Oscar Wilde, Kenneth Grahame, J. M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum--to more contemporary renditions by Angela Carter, Jane Yolen, Salman Rushdie, Emma Donoghue, and Francesca Lia Block.
If dragons have a lasting legacy, then it certainly reflects the staying power of fairy tales in all of their manifestations. J. R. R. Tolkien suggests that fairy tales provide the consolation of the good catastrophe (“eucatastrophe”), Max Luthi tells us that fairy tales are a portrait of humanity, Bruno Bettleheim contends that they tap a psychological outlet for liberating children, and Marie-Louise von Franz posits that they embrace the collective unconsciousness of our archetypal needs. That’s a lot to ask from a “once upon a time” beginning. Recently, Jack Zipes in Why Fairy Tales Stick and The Irresistible Fairy Tale suggests that fairy tales have an even more essential role--they are narratives of survival (from an evolutionary standpoint) as these tales provide “memes,” narratives of cultural transmission, that help listeners and readers adapt to age-old issues of environmental and cultural survival. That’s why, maybe, we continue to “live happily ever after” in these tales.
So while you wait for some dragon to roast you silly, you may want to open these pages and engulf yourself in these original fairy tales. Rest assured, you can anticipate a most fantastical surprise that just might save your life.
-- John Pennington, April 2014
But we shouldn’t be surprised that dragons have haunted and hounded fairy tales and fantasies. They are part of mythology, not just dragon lore. On April 23 (yes, Shakespeare’s birthday) England celebrates St. George’s Day. King Lear states: “Come not between the dragon and his wrath,” though the patron saint of England, St. George, does just that--slaying a dragon and rescuing a princess in one fell swoop, thus setting in motion a dragon-motif at the heart of numerous fairy tales. Even earlier in literary history, Grendel and his mother couldn’t defeat Beowulf, but a dragon could. Smaug tried, but his Achilles scale was his downfall in Tolkien’s The Hobbit. And we at St. Norbert College have an allegiance to Hagrid’s dragon Norbert in the Harry Potter series.
As I Wait for the Dragon to Roast Me: Twenty-Five Tales to Read While Anticipating a Most Fantastical Demise is a collection of original fairy tales from the Classic and Contemporary Fairy Tales class at St. Norbert College. To prepare for their tales, the students read a variety of fairy tales ranging from the classics--Perrault, the Grimms, Hans Christian Andersen--to the Victorian and Edwardian masters--Lewis Carroll, George MacDonald, Oscar Wilde, Kenneth Grahame, J. M. Barrie, L. Frank Baum--to more contemporary renditions by Angela Carter, Jane Yolen, Salman Rushdie, Emma Donoghue, and Francesca Lia Block.
If dragons have a lasting legacy, then it certainly reflects the staying power of fairy tales in all of their manifestations. J. R. R. Tolkien suggests that fairy tales provide the consolation of the good catastrophe (“eucatastrophe”), Max Luthi tells us that fairy tales are a portrait of humanity, Bruno Bettleheim contends that they tap a psychological outlet for liberating children, and Marie-Louise von Franz posits that they embrace the collective unconsciousness of our archetypal needs. That’s a lot to ask from a “once upon a time” beginning. Recently, Jack Zipes in Why Fairy Tales Stick and The Irresistible Fairy Tale suggests that fairy tales have an even more essential role--they are narratives of survival (from an evolutionary standpoint) as these tales provide “memes,” narratives of cultural transmission, that help listeners and readers adapt to age-old issues of environmental and cultural survival. That’s why, maybe, we continue to “live happily ever after” in these tales.
So while you wait for some dragon to roast you silly, you may want to open these pages and engulf yourself in these original fairy tales. Rest assured, you can anticipate a most fantastical surprise that just might save your life.
-- John Pennington, April 2014