folklore and semiotics || semiotics and traditional lore: the medieval dragon tradition

Semiotics and Traditional Lore: The Medieval Dragon TraditionAuthor(s): Jonathan D. EvansSource: Journal of Folklore Research, Vol. 22, No. 2/3, Folklore and Semiotics (May - Dec.,1985), pp. 85-112Published by: Indiana University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814387 .

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Jonathan D. Evans

Semiotics and Traditional Lore: The Medieval Dragon Tradition

The dragon, whose perennial vitality is attested by its presence in texts

ranging from the earliest cosmogonic myths to the latest fantasy works, has been a stock element in popular literature for centuries. Among the more recent revivals of interest in dragons, we might cite the highly popular novels of writers such an Anne McCaffrey, Ursula LeGuin, and J. R. R. Tolkien; cinematic fantasies such as Dragonslayer and Conan the Barbarian; the fantasy role-playing game "Dungeons and Dragons," and the video-

game "Dragon's Lair." These widely disparate manifestations of dragons exhibit some remarkable similarities of form, structure, and conceptual content, and they depend mutually upon a lineage that extends backwards through the great folktale collections from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to medieval lore about dragons and dragon-slayers. The interest in mythology and folklore that developed along with the growth of

philology in the latter half of the 1800s brought into print a number of stories collected from a variety of hitherto untapped sources, and dragons occur in many of the tales. Thus, when the dragon did reemerge from

dormancy it was as a creature of folktales, the unsophisticated stories of low rather than high culture. In this sense, the current revival of dragon lore is

parallel to that of a century ago. Dragons are interesting creatures, but they tend to appear in a literature generally appreciated by a popular rather than a scholarly readership, and in both conception and interest they are closer to folktales and medieval romance than they are to literature.

Several studies of dragon folktales have appeared in the last few decades. A

thorough investigation of dragons in British folktales has been made by Jacqueline Simpson in an article-length analysis of fifty dragon tales (1978) and a book entitled British Dragons (1980);' the tale-type is indexed as AT300 in Stith Thompson's Motif Index (1955); according to Thompson's analysis of the dragon tale in The Folktale,2 there are supposed to be about

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1100 extant examples, the classic version being "Die Zwei Briider" in the Grimms' collection. An illustrative sampling of folktales and legends concerning the dragon is found in Katharine Briggs's Dictionary of British Folktales in the English Language,3 where some two dozen texts gathered from many sources are reprinted.

The relationship between medieval and modern dragon lore is further complicated by the fact that J. R. R. Tolkien, whose Smaug, Chrysophylax, Glaurung, Ancalagon, and Scatha (dragons found in The Hobbit, Farmer Giles of Ham, The Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales and The Lord of the

Rings, respectively) set much of the modern frenzy about dragons in motion, was a medievalist whose dragon lore is demonstrably founded upon his intimate familiarity with Old English and Old Norse legends in addition to the folk- and fairy-tales to which he was introduced as a young person.4 If we are to understand the dragon lore in modern popular fantasy, we must go to both the folktales and medieval literature for its sources, if for no other reason than the recent popularity of Tolkien alone.

Tolkien's famous remark5 regarding the paucity of dragons in Germanic literature must be taken advisedly: few dragons indeed challenge those of the Beowulf and the Sigurd legends in narrative prominence and thematic

importance, but there are nonetheless enough dragons extant in Old English and Old Norse literature to qualify as the "wilderness" of dragons Tolkien tried to wave away. Not all are very significant within the structure of the narratives they inhabit, but their numbers are great enough to warrant a careful look at the group: Inger M. Boberg's Motif-Index of Early- Icelandic Literature (which is incomplete, owing to the author's untimely death) lists more than two dozen early Icelandic texts in which dragon motifs appear; some of these texts offer more than one dragon episode, so there are at least three dozen dragons in Old Norse literature which can be said to illustrate the Northern European background out of which more recent dragon lore has grown.6 Old Icelandic provides an especially important corpus of dragon lore texts, since the Icelanders, whose encyclo- pedic literary taste is widely recognized, preserved a veritable compendium of popular dragon legends both in their own native literature and in that which they translated from other linguistic traditions. Significantly absent from Old Norse dragon lore are any clear references to antecedents from classical mythology; the Old Norse corpus is thus to some extent a selective representation of medieval European dragon narratives uncontaminated by the dragons in the St. George legend and all the associated lore from the Physiologus and related bestiaries, allegories, commentaries, and natural histories inherited from patristic sources-whose influence on medieval English dragon lore may be traced to its zenith in the Faerie Queene. As we

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SEMIOTICS AND THE MEDIEVAL DRAGON TRADITION

shall see, the dragon-slayer story was used in this corpus both to affirm and to question the heroic ethos within which the story took shape.

The problem with a folkloristic approach to dragon lore is that, by and large, dragon lore is universally expressed not in isolated motifs but in motif clusters arranged narratively in the sequence pattern known as the dragon- slayer story. A careful reading of Boberg's index makes this apparent: dragon motifs are distributed in three main categories, the "fight with a

dragon," "flying dragon," and "dragon guards treasure."7 But upon closer investigation, one finds a great deal of overlap between them, with many texts manifesting all three. When dragon motifs occur in Old Norse texts, they tend to occur within a single narrative unit; the motifs are not usually isolated from one another but fall into patterns related at a larger level. Research that focuses upon dragon motifs alone is scarcely adequate.

For this reason, the analytical method adopted here borrows major features from the modern interchange between semiotics and folklore research. The decision to use semiotics answers some of the difficulties described above by adopting the perspective on folkore and literary semiotics promoted recently by Richard Bauman, who identifies the special role of folklore in the development of semiotic theory. Vladimir Propp, he

suggests, profited from the formalist principle that "it is necessary first to describe the object of study in precise structural terms before moving on to a consideration of its history,"8 a principle well known to semioticians in Ferdinand de Saussure's emphasis on synchronic as prior to diachronic lingustic analysis. Folklore and semiotics thus at least owe a mutual debt to common sources. The academic progeny of Propp and Saussure, developing along different but parallel lines of influence, share recognition of the importance of synchronic analysis; the lineage of Saussure finds expression in Hjelmslevian semiotics, whose recent popularizers have included both Roland Barthes and Umberto Eco.9 Propp's followers constitute the European formalist tradition, out of which an important contributing branch of literary semiotics has grown; one can recite a litany of names of those whose narrative theory took its insights from Proppian functionalism: A. J. Greimas, Gerard Genette, Claude Bremond, and Tzvetan Todorov, as well as, again, Roland Barthes, have addressed topics of central concern to students of folk narrative; at the same time, their work contributed significantly to the French structuralist tradition which, until the work of Russian and Czech formalists became more widely translated and read in the early 1970s, was just about the only important semiotics of narrative in academic criticism.

But Bauman's more important point concerning the performative aspect of oral narratives makes a genuinely semiotic methodology accessible to analysis of folklore. Drawing upon Petr Bogatyrev and Mikhail Bakhtin,

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Bauman stresses the idea that folk culture may be treated as a full system of

signs in which each performance of an oral text may be considered an independent work.10 Based on Roman Jakobson's 1960 model of speech as a situated process, the folklore text must be seen as a product of interplay between individual and communal goals, values, intentions, and so on. Performance answers to performance in nonwritten narrative just as it does for written texts. As Bakhtin has shown us, says Bauman, "All texts, oral or written, within a given field of expression and meaning, are part of a chain or network of texts in dialogue with each other."" The traditionality of the oral text, he goes on to say, "unites it with literature still more firmly," as communal censorship will guarantee that it accurately reflects communal rather than merely idiosyncratic values. Censorship operates similarly then in both oral and written narrative to suppress idiolect and promote koine in the dialogue that comprises verbal art; both oral and written texts are relevant to the analysis of folk traditions as they are encoded in narratives.

Probably the most semiotically "hot" concept informing this study is that of "code," which has independent life in the discourse of information theory but which entered the semiotic lexicon with full status in Jakobson's concluding statements in the 1960 symposium on "Style in Language."'2 Coding is relevant to poetics because the shift of attention away from the semantics of verbal structures toward relations between them entails a shift

away from the particular lexical expression and toward the rules ("underlying," implicit, or inherent) governing the manifestation of expressions.'3 These rules may be regarded as the functional grammar of texts; the extension of this concept from strictly linguistic analysis to the poetics of folktales and literary texts accounts for a great deal of the structuralist and semiotic revolutions in recent years and is the hallmark of the impact of functional linguistics upon the study of verbal art of all kinds. But the

rejection of formalism by semioticians in the quest of a nonobjectivist epistemology has left an unfortunate methodological gap. The folklore researcher finds himself between a Scylla and Charybdis of analytical methodologies: the motif-index/tale-type method gives apparent specificity in classification of narrative detail but no clear sense of the functional unity of scattered manifestations of a motif-i.e., a character, event, action, or

object that might serve as the beginning-point for interpretive statements concerning that motif in a culture, historical period, or across a span of time. The formal method proposed by Propp and used by a generation of folklorists solves the problem of taxonomic superfluity by reducing the tale to thirty-one functions in seven function-classes, but in so doing sacrifices much of the specific content and inherent interest that at least is present (and programmatically so") in the motif-indexes. To put this problem in another way, analysis of a tale into its constituent motifs atomizes the

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organic structure in such a way as to obscure the very understanding of what the tale is about, which is presumably what the researcher aims for at some (perhaps remote) point;15 a very similar objection is often raised against structural analysis: the reduction of a narrative to its deep-structural system may be wonderfully revealing, but of what? By its very nature, the deep structure of a narrative is an abstraction from its surface-level text; the surface level is often precisely where our attention and interest are focused.'6 We may be interested in the fact that in a given text the dragon fulfills the function of the villain in the story's plot, but we are more likely to be interested in this particular dragon and how it compares with other dragons in other similar (or dissimilar) stories. Story-tellers and their audiences are interested in characters, creatures, events, objects and locations, not in abstractions like functions, formclasses and the like. Who are we to argue with them?

If we omit for a moment the possible objection that a results-oriented research from the outset dooms itself to the inevitability of finding results- that is, to manufacturing in advance the very phenomenon its sets out to discover-we can proceed in several ways. The first involves the adoption of the distinction between etic and emic perspectives on textual structure.'7 The etic perspective focuses on the structure of a particular human behavior in its concrete manifestations, while the emic perspective looks at the abstract, functional structure of a category of behavior apart from any particular example of such behavior. These are perspectives that the analyst adopts rather than inherent aspects of the analytical object; the methodology is deductive insofar as the definition of an emic structure is based upon comparative analysis of the etic manifestations; the model that results from such comparisons is generated by the functional categories of the object itself rather than the analyst's preconceptions concerning the object.'8 It must be stressed here that the etic/emic distinction, while in some ways similar to that between deep and surface structure which has energized much structuralist narratology, differs from the latter in some important respects. Both take the surface structure of the narrative text as the starting point; both

attempt to refer textual structure to abstract principles not at first readily apparent in the superficial elements of the text. The difference, however, lies in just what kind of abstraction is appealed to. Structural narratology presupposes an "underlying" structure in some sense "below" the surface of the text-whether in cognitive sets organizing the mental framework of sender and addressee or in internalized rules (a "grammar") governing composition of the syntax of the story'9-while the perspective adopted here sees the abstraction in paradigmatic sets of potential fillers in a hierarchical structure of functional slots. These fillers, represented in the analyst's schematic diagram of the text's structure by the paradigmatic axis, are not

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part of a deep structure but pertain to the surface structure as alternative

potentialities, all of them mutually possible, most of them rejected in the actual construction of the text. The surface structure of the text is thus of

primary importance, since this is where the dialogic chorus acts out its

struggle in shaping the text: all possible dragon-slayer episodes compete in each particular episode of the type; the interaction of codes (aesthetic, narrative, religious, ethical, personal, communal, etc.) is fought at the surface level of the text itself. There may indeed be reasons to suspect that medieval narratives in particular are the product of a period when awareness of superficial textual structures was particularly acute.20

The "deep structure" of dragon-slayer episodes therefore is relevant to their analysis and interpretation, but not by any means to the exclusion of surface structures. The performance of a verbal text does not merely involve the processing of micropropositions to macropropositions, macrostructure to global textual structure (though these are essential), but involves

additionally a refocusing upon the microtextual level, setting into motion a continual shifting between micro- and macrostructures so that the text comments upon its own contents and foregrounds its own expression-plane as a major locus of semiotic activity. Here, in tensions between textual structures and the conventional codes that make them possible, the

possiblity for ambiguity and irony emerges, and this contributes to the text's aesthetic quality as well as to its function as a repository of cultural values- which themselves are often quite complex and ambivalent toward the human realities upon which they comment.

In this as in any functional analysis of verbal art, it must be borne in mind that the most significant elements of the text may be the least interesting. Often it is the most mundane or trivial features-ones most likely to go unnoticed in analysis that looks for creative innovation-that provide the best clues to the meaning of a text, by virtue of their widespread repetition in the global textual matrix of a culture's discourse. Again, the middle ages are

particularly exemplary of this point, as the poetics of medieval literature

placed a higher value on variation within repetition than other periods in the history of poetics. When verbal elements become so widely accepted within a culture as to pass out of the domain of individual creativity and into the realm of cultural acceptation and validity, they enter the grammar of that culture-in formulas, stock scenes, episodes, plot-schemas, and the like-as unconscious patterns, the putative naturalness of which attests to their general acceptance as expressions of cultural values. Thus, for

example, when we find that the typical dragon-slayer episode in Old Norse contains a segment early in the episode in which the hero travels to the scene where the fight takes place-a segment that usually is far from interesting, narrated in formulaic phrases, and often manifest at the zero degree (in

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single verb lexes such as ferr, ridtr, etc.)-we may be inclined to dismiss this as an unimportant and virtually nonsignificant point. But when we begin to recognize that most elements encoded in the semantics of /dragon/ and in the structure of the dragon-slayer episode serve to delineate a sharp demarcation between the human and monstrous, we are able to reinterpret the formulas and segments denoting the hero's traveling to the fight as significant to this demarcation: the dragon's habitat is remote (on land, in forest, in mountains or caves, in or near bodies of water), in direct contrast to the social surroundings from which the hero travels to encounter the dragon. Of course, the dragon-slayer episode is not the only episode containing this element; the sagas are characterized by such travels; the riddaras6gur ("sagas of 'riders' ") by very definition concern chivalric knights whose most characteristic feature is riding from one court to another through various tests and challenges. But by sensitizing ourselves to even the most superficial elements of textual structure, we denaturalize verbal structures-"recognizing" them to gain fuller understanding of the subtleties upon which they operate.

What is important is that both deep and surface-level structures in verbal art are the results of conventional associations, the encoding of highly abstract values in concrete manifestations according to patterns dictated by traditions whose formulations are often concurrent with the emergence of a cultural identity. Coding is a highly complex operation functioning at all levels of the textual hierarchy and within the contractual relationship between text, composer, and audience. Here we shall focus on two elements

only: encoding of the dragon-slayer story in an episodic structure; encoding of the semantic elements defining dragon and hero. The assumption is that

analysis of medieval dragon texts reveals traces of the coding process at both levels of focus: elementary features defining the dragon and the hero, attested in the text's lexical stratum; structural patterns at the level of the

plot attested in the macro-structure of the dragon-slayer episode. Functional analysis of medieval narrative structure is by no means a new

idea: Donald K Frye's use of oral-formulaic concepts in analysis of the larger textual structures of Old English narrative,21 Susan Wittig's analysis of plot structures in Middle English romance,22 and Eugene Dorfman's study of narremic structures in medieval French and Spanish23 provide an important background, as does Peter Haidu's more recent work on twelfth-century French romance.24 In Old Norse, Carol Clover, Richard Allen, and Lars Lonnroth have made significant headway.25 Most of this scholarship has been devoted primarily to the global structure of medieval plots, partly in an attempt to work out the poetics of plots in the absence of Aristotelian poetics in the middle ages.26 But what works on the syntagmatic axis works equally well on the paradigmatic, though with a different goal and different results.

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By isolating and comparing recurrent narrative "building blocks" in the corpus of saga literature, we may be able to achieve an understanding of one facet of the "narrative grammar" of Old Norse sagas in general and thus gain access to a phenomenon of general cultural significance beyond the saga world itself and beyond artificial distinctions between high literary culture and popular lore, more widely in the cultural thematics such phenomena may suggest. The dragon episode, a "stock scene" in Lonnroth's terminology, is far from being a trivial example of such structures, since dragon-slayers are mythologically significant: one of Thor's distinctive acts is to slay the miitgarits ormr; the legendary Sigurd is preeminently a dragon- slayer; Old Norse and Old English dragon stories are found in myth and legend as well as in sagas of all the subgeneric types. Dragons in medieval Germanic culture are not restricted to dragon-slayer narratives alone; their track is to be traced in ship ornament, armor and weapon decorations, manuscript illuminations and person- and place-names. Even the strictly textual manifestations of medieval dragons are not all narrative: dragons appear.in gnomic verse and chronicle,27 and even in narrative texts dragons sometimes occur in descriptive rather than narrative segments. Sometimes an absent dragon narrative asserts itself despite the lack of its manifestation in a text (see the discussion of Egils saga below). An analytical method is required to relate all of these cultural phenomena to each other without obliterating relevant distinctions: a manuscript illumination of a dragon- fight is not an instance of a motif, though it might be related to it; the presence of a dragon in a chronicle entry may be similar to a lygisaga episode in which a shape-shifter changes into a dragon in the midst of a battle, but a critique of either by the strict generic standards of the other will distort the nature of the inquiry. Functional analysis of dragon-slayer episodes in Old Norse sagas uncovers a story-structure whose organizational principles point toward elementary patterns of traditional association regarding dragons and dragon-slayers-the dragon lore of medieval Germanic culture. These may be expressed independently of a narrative, as ornamental manifestations of dragons show. But these independent manifestations can only make sense because a dragon-slayer story exists to organize them in a coherent structure.

As an example, let us look at the dragon-slayer episode in Erex saga.

Fra Erix er bat at seigia at hann ridur nu leingi umm skoginn ok hanns unnusta ok hafva aungva faedu utann alldin af vide ok eirn dag heyra ]au 6gurlig laeti. jui naest sia Pau huar eirn fugl dreki fligur ok hefvur i munni eirn mann albryniadann ok hefvur svolgit hann pa meir enn at belltisstad enn hann lifdi j6 enn Dreckanumm verdur madurinn uiingur ok flaug hann miok lagt Erix harmar nu slikann dauda dyrdlegss dreingss ok heitir nu af ollu

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hiarta a almattugann Gud sier til hiilpar enn manninumm til lifs, ridur sidann at honumm framm medur snoru hiarta ok vil helldur missa sitt lif enn

hialpa aeigi pessumm mannj, ok hoggur a baexl dreckanum sva at af t6k enn vidur petta hogg laetur hann manninn lausann, ok uendir sier at Erix ok

steypir sier at honum med gapanda munne, enn Erix liop af hestinumm ok

leggur sinu spioti i munn drekans af ollu afle allt til hiartanns ok fiell hann pa daudur a hest Erix ok fieck hann bana Nii geingur Erix at pessumm riddara sem at a vellinumm la i oviti sva naer at bana kominn ok hanns fru Ovide ok leita honumm nii lifs sem P)au meigu ok er hann raknar vid Packar hann Erix

hiartannliga sina lifgiof. Pau spyria hann at nafnj enn hann svarar: Ek heitir Plato Margdei borgar hertoge systur son herra Valvens af Artus kongs garde en

pessi dreki t6k mik sofvandi i morginn af minumm skilldi, ok er min fru ok skialldsveinar skamt hiedann brott leitandi min Nii gef ek mik ok allt mitt riki i ydvart valid. Nilu ackar Erix almattugum Gudi er hann hefvur frelsat fyrir sina hond sva agiaetann riddara [ui at giorla kendi huor keirra annann, ok vard Par nii hinn mesti fagnadar fundur, ok skiott koma par menn Plato ok hanns unnusta. hon sorgadi nii miok af hanns brotthvarfvi aetlandi hann nii daudann ok er bau sia hann lifanda ok vita hversu at hefvur borit, verda jau

fegnari enn fra meigi seigia, fallandi til fota Erix ok jacka honumm nii

mikiliga fennann sigur ok milldi verk ok biodandi honumm ok sina fylgd ok

Pi6nustu enn hann neitar jvi ok bidur Pau fara til Artus k6ngss ok seigia honumm huad til tidinda hafdi borit i jeirra ferd enn jaug giora sva ok t6

naudug ok skilia Par vidur hann at sinne enn Erix ridur i sk6ginn medur sina unnustu langa hrid. .. .28

[Of Erix there is this to be said, that he rode now a long time through the forest with his lady, and they had no food except the fruits of the woods, and one day they heard a hideous sound and next they saw a dragon flying. It had a man in full armor in its mouth and had swallowed him up beyond the waist. He was

alive, yet the man was a burden for the dragon, and the dragon flew very low. Erix feared for the death of the glorious knight and called upon God with all his heart to help him, and to spare the man's life. He rode thence to him with a heart undaunted and would rather have lost his own life than fail to help the

man, and he hewed at the dragon's shoulder and so it fell to its knees. With that

blow, the dragon let go of the man and turned to Erix and leapt toward him with its mouth gaping open. Erix leapt from his horse's back and laid a spear into the dragon's mouth and into its heart with great strength. The dragon fell down dead onto Erix's horse and with that, death took it. Now Erix and his

lady Ovide went to the rider, who lay upon the ground unconscious; they tried to save his life as best they could, and when he recovered his senses, he heartily thanked them for his rescue. Then they asked him his name, and he answered, "I am called Plato, duke of Vigdaei, sister-son of Sir Valven of King Arthur's court. This dragon took me while I was sleeping in the morning by my shield, and before my lady or my servants could go get help for me. Now I give myself and all my kingdom into your control." Now Erix thanks God that he has rescued so good a knight, for he treated them both well, and there was a joyful

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meeting between them. And soon there came Plato's men and his lady sorrowfully upon his trail, and they expected to find him dead. But when they perceived his rescue and realized that he was alive, and learned how it had happened, they became more joyful than words can say, falling at Erix's feet and thanking him for the remarkable victory and charitable act, promising him support and service. But he refused immediately and bid them go to King Arthur and tell him what things had transpired in this affair, and they did so, though reluctantly. Thus they parted with him, and Erix rode on with his lady through the forest.]

This episode, from one of the Old Norse riddaras6gur, represents dragon and hero in a highly conventional situation: the hero happens upon the

dragon by accident, finds that the dragon has taken a person captive, and decides to do battle with it in order to perform the rescue. The episode is all the more interesting because, as Foster W. Blaisdell has shown,29 it is part of an interpolated passage in an adaptation of the Old French Erec et Enide. There is no trace of it in the original; it is the result of wholesale invention, and takes its place in the structure of the saga as one of three adventures in which Erex performs a rescue, in contrast to an earlier section in which the hero fights primarily for self-preservation.30

Elementary features encoded in referents to the dragon include the

following: the dragon's habitat is remote, since Erix rides leingi umm

skoginn [for a long time through the forest] before he encounters it; the

dragon is large-larger than man-size, for it has i munni eirn mann

albryniadann ok hefvur svolgit hann pa meir enn at beltisstad [a man in full armor in its mouth and had swallowed him up beyond the waist]; it can fly, for Erix first sees the dragon fligur [fly(ing)]; it is ferocious, because before

they see the dragon, they hear an ogurlig laeti [a hideous sound]. Incidentally, elementary features of the dragon's physiognomy relevant to the battle scene are mentioned: the dragon has a shoulder [baexl], a gaping mouth [gapanda munne], and a heart [hiartanns], which Erix pierces with his spear, putting it to death.

The structure of this simple episode follows the conventions for saga scenes, as they have been termed by Carol Clover and others3--exhibiting an introductory segment in which the principal combatants are brought into proximity, a dramatic center in which the combatants meet in conflict, and a resolution of the conflict with attendant events in which particular details of the first two segments are settled. In this case, as in most conventional dragon episodes, the conflict at the dramatic center revolves around the opposition of the two combatants-hero and dragon-and the resolution is effected in the dragon's death. The opposition is conveyed not only in the placement of dragon and hero in opposing roles but also through elementary features defining the combatants and investing the roles with

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content that makes the relations between them genuinely oppositional. Mimesis operates here to a certain extent: the semantics of the two roles borrow features from human experience in violent encounters with both human beings and large animals, including snakes. Convention operates as well: the hero, a human, generally travels from a social setting (in the riddarasbgur, a royal court) into wilderness, where he meets a series of foes including a dragon; he does battle with the dragon in order to deliver a captive (maiden, lion, or-as here-another warrior). The rewards for his success are also conventional, frequently involving a kingdom or a share in one, a marriageable princess, or a monetary treasure. The dragon, on the other hand, a nonhuman monster, inhabits the wilderness and way-lays those who venture away from social centers. Often the dragon wanders from its own habitat into areas of human settlement on marauding missions; but the battle between hero and dragon ends in the monster's death, and if the dragon's habitat includes a den in which treasure is hoarded, the knight who wins the victory plunders the hoard and claims the treasure as the rightful spoils of battle.

My analysis of some three dozen dragon-slayer episodes in Old English and Old Norse32 suggests that if we analyze the semantics of /dragon/ and the structure of the dragon episodes for functional features, eliminating all particular details in favor of the functional slots alone, we find that Old English dragon lore and the Scandinavian analogues in which it is based define a semantic space for /dragon/ in four main subcategories of meaning-physiognomy, psychology, habitat, and behavior-all of which emphasize differences between the human and the monstrous. The dragon's body is generally very large, serpentine, equipped with lashing tail, sharp talons, a gaping mouth with sharp teeth. Where psychological phenomena are attributed to the dragon they are of a singularly bestial malevolence. The dragon's habitat, as described above, is remote and solitary. The dragon's behavioral characteristics-based upon elements of the previous categories-include maleficent marauding, fire-breathing, taking of live captives, and jealous hoarding of treasure.

Old English and Old Norse dragon-slayer episodes, the chief cultural artifacts in which medieval dragon lore is embodied, distribute these semantic features in such a way as to produce texts exhibiting this narrative structure: preparation, travel, combat, slaying, and reward. The preparation slot of the episode is nearly always filled with the hero's taking on armaments and weapons, though this segment may be manifest with some creative variations which include spiritual arming (the warrior hears mass before embarking on his mission) and the acquisition of magical tokens that will prevent the dragon's fire, poison, or bodily weaponry from harming the hero. The travel slot usually makes some mention of the geographical

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remoteness of the dragon's den; fillers here range from single verbs to highly detailed descriptions of the surroundings through which the warrior goes. The combat section of the episode, which forms the dramatic center, is manifest in highly formulaic sentences which admit of almost limitless expansion: the zero degree includes the simple assertion the 'the hero slew a dragon.' At its most expansive, the dragon-fight may go on for pages with numerous reversals of narrative focus (e.g., Beowulf). The slaying of the dragon brings the dramatic center to its climax and is the most formulaic segment of the dragon episode, for the death-blow is repeatedly said to occur when the hero lays a sword into the dragon's side, under its wing, or in the shoulder or thrusts a spear into the dragon's mouth all the way to its heart. An optional slot appended to this segment includes the dismembering of the dragon, when the hero beheads the dragon, cuts off its talons, or cuts out its tongue in order to take away some trophy from the dead dragon's body. The reward slot occurs in the final scene of the episode. Here, the hero receives treasure either from the dragon's hoard or from a grateful king; the hero may be given dominion over part or all of a kingdom, and he may be given the hand of a princess in marriage.

Turning now to the content of the episodes, we find that the episode asserts the values of the heroic ethos, in some cases quite self-consciously and in others only by contextual inference. Viewed as conventions by which semantics and narrative structure encode the content of dragon-slayer episodes, the message of this coding procedure could be phrased something like this: "the warrior is a hero," a concept that can be expressed in a variety of ways and which takes on more specific meaning in particular contexts but which is always defined, in Proppian terms, by contrast to the opposing concept "the warrior is a villain." In Germanic tradition, dragon-slayers never occupy the function of the villain. When the warrior is young, and when his fight with a dragon is his first heroic exploit, the encoded message may be "the warrior's heroic status is demonstrated for the first time." When the warrior's heroic status is already established, the situation within which the dragon-fight occurs may take on other meanings including simple reinforcement of that status or, in contexts involving the promise of reward (a kingdom, bride, treasure, etc.), meanings derived from the plot's emphasis on the warrior's motive for engaging in the fight. These motives are generally made explicit in text segments immediately preceding the beginning of the episode or very early in the episode itself. When the battle occurs at the end of the hero's career, the dragon-fight may represent the supreme challenge faced by the warrior, in which victory connects the human hero with legendary or divine dragon-slayers (e.g., Sigurd, or Thor), thus guaranteeing him heroic fame after death.

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Relationships between these two systems-semantics of /dragon/ and dragon-slayer episode structure-are manifest in relation to yet a third hierarchy, the structure of actual dragon-slayer texts. If the two previous systems represent possibilities conditioning the production and reception of dragon texts, the third represents a concretization of them: dragon-slayer episodes select from among the abstract possibilities; each episode expresses a unique set of functional relationships representing a series of specific choices concerning how dragon lore and traditional plot patterns could be utilized to produce a dragon-slayer episode whose details would satisfy audience expectation and at the same time advance a specific theme. No two dragon-slayer episodes are alike, and the differences between them can be accounted for in terms of the different ways these three hierarchical fields interact.

The manner in which these fields interact is complex. The plot structures and semantic systems of particular dragon-slayer episodes represent specific choices regarding inclusion and exclusion of compositional elements and the proportioning of attention given them through apportionment of textual space, sequencing, and height and/or breadth of focus. To this we may add factors of addition, through incorporation of elements outside the systems previously described and-importanatly-mutation of internal systemic units. This last involves the mediation of oppositions that Claude Levi-Strauss has indicated operates in myth and which Einar Haugen locates in Germanic tradition.33

Wherever organizational complexity exists there is also the possibility tor

ambiguity. Defined by William Empson as "any verbal nuance ... which

gives room for alternative reactions to the same piece of language,"34 ambiguity is described in semiotic terms by Umberto Eco as "a mode of

violating the rules of the code."35 This definition extends Empson's "verbal nuance" to include textual ambiguities at levels beyond the merely lexical (to which Empson devotes most of his attention); it locates the source of

ambiguity neither exclusively in the verbal structure of the text itself nor in the subjective response of the reader, but in the aesthetic code that unites and includes both. Indeed, aesthetic experience as a whole is seen by Jonathan Culler as making particular use of ambiguity in just these terms:

. . aesthetic expression aims to communicate notions, subtleties, com-

plexities which have not been formulated, and, therefore, as soon as an aesthetic code comes to be generally perceived as a code (as a way of expressing notions which have already been articulated), then works of art tend to move

beyond it. They question, parody, and generally undermine it, while

exploring its possible mutations and extensions. One might even say that much of the interest of works of art lies in the way in which they explore and

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modify the codes which they seem to be using; this makes semiological investigation of these systems both highly relevant and extremely difficult.36

Not only relevant and difficult, one might add, but highly interesting as well. Culler unnecessarily diachronizes this phenomenon, suggesting first an aesthetic code is articulated and then, at some later point in time, the code is undermined. It might be more accurate to say that all codes contain the inherent potential for self-contradiction, and that at any given time this potential may or may not be actualized. Texts using codes in this way depend upon the tensions generated by such internal contradictions for the energy needed to complicate a plot, advance a complex theme, and thus to warrant their preservation as cultural artifacts. Otherwise, the rewards for decoding them become too small, and such texts are marked as 'trivial,' lose currency, and disappear from a culture's repertoire.

The potential for ambiguity in the dragon code seems to have been realiz,d more effectively by earlier medieval texts than by later ones. The dragon-slayer episode in Beowulf and in the Poetic Edda, whose subject matters are far older than the texts in which they are preserved, are by far the most interesting of all the dragon-slayer texts, largely because, in them, ambiguity is employed with the greatest skill as a means of making thematic statements.

Eco's recognition that aesthetic experience "brings into play even the microstructures of the material from which it is made" and that "(a)esthetics is not only concerned with hypersystems" but also "with a whole series of hypostructures"37 paves the way for a theoretical approach to the aesthetic use of ambiguity that is particularly applicable to a semiotic study of dragon lore. Eco's five types of textual ambiguity (phonetic, lexical, syntactic, semantic, and stylistic) suggest that verbal nuance is a feature of the use of language which has, as part of its design, the attempt to convey many messages simultaneously. "Thus," he says,

art seems to be a way of interconnecting messages in order to produce a text in which (a) many messages, on different levels and planes of the discourse, are ambiguously organized; (b) these ambiguities are not realized at random, but follow a precise design; (c) both the normal and the ambiguous devices within a given message exert a contextual pressure on both the normal and ambiguous devices within all others; (d) the way in which the norms of a given system are offended by one message is the same as that in which the norms of other systems are offended by the various messages that they permit.38

When two messages within the same text conflict radically with, or are

opposites of, one another, the result is irony-one of the most meaningful kinds of ambiguity that can be exploited for thematic effect in verbal art.

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The medieval dragon texts alluded to here utilized the conventions of dragon-slaying for a variety of purposes ranging from simple expression of a heroic theme-the "message" of many texts-to highly ironic usage in which the conventions were subverted to engage a critique of the heroic ethos. This range possesses three main categories, in which the manifestation of dragon lore exhibits normal usage, where there is no discernible conflict between the episode's overt meaning and other, subordinate messages in the text; ambiguous usage, in which the episode's meaning is at variance, though not necessarily opposed, with other intratextual messages; and ironic usage in which the episode's primary message, usually the one encoded by the plot, is undermined by another, opposite one running against it in the text. Whether this represents a rejection of the heroic ethos or merely an exploration of negative implications of it is another matter. Georges Dumezil has shown convincingly that the heroic tradition in Proto- Indo-European myth involves at least an ambivalence toward the hero, since the heroic warriors of a number of functionally equivalent IE myths show the hero as flawed with sin.39 In Germanic mythology in particular, which exhibits a "typical slanting of the first-function [sovereign] gods toward the second-function [warrior] gods,"40 the warrior's status could be highly ambiguous: the roles of sovereign and hero, though related, are not identical; confusion of the two can result in tragedy.41 The elemental force embodied in the hero and enabling heroic action also renders the hero's position awkward. Commenting on a parallel from Greek mythology, James M. Redfield has suggested that "while the hero becomes godlike in his capacity to ward off destruction . . ., he is also latently the savage beast" and thus a threat to the very social stability he is supposed to defend.42 This aspect of the inherent ambiguity of the dragon-slaying hero is exploited in a critique of the heroic ethos in Germanic tradition.

Two fundamental semic systems are deployed simultaneously in dragon- slayer episodes: the opposition human/monster and its implied contradictories, and the opposition hero/villain and its contradictories. The medieval heroic code promotes a correlation between these two systems by which human and hero are seen as equivalents; likewise, monster and villain are correlated. A monster is the opposite of a human precisely inasmuch as its physiognomic, psychological, habitual, and behavioral characteristics are the opposites of corresponding human attributes. When texts are composed in which the principal actants are a hero and a monster, this opposition manifests itself at the semantic level, distributing features of the actants according to their respective functions on either side of the opposition. The level of narrative propositions bears out this allocation of semantic features as well: dragons are described as being and behaving in ways befitting monstrous villains, while heroes exhibit the opposite states and actions of

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valorous humans. Finally, at the level of the plot, this opposition organizes the narrative so that it falls into two portions precisely at the point of narrative climax resolving the hero/dragon conflict. The first half of the episode explores the generation and terms of the conflict; the second half explores the consequences of both the conflict and its resolution.

The nature of the opposition and the manner of its resolution are keys to the message of the text. In the dragon-slayer texts, the opposition is generally a heroic one: a human warrior fights battles to protect and preserve his society (family, comitatus, dynastic line, tribe). The resolution necessi- tates the elimination of the dragon and always results in the dragon's death. Once introduced, no dragon survives in the plot of any medieval text, even though, logically speaking, it would be equally effective if a hero managed to frighten a dragon away, or if the dragon simply lost interest, became distracted, or for any other reason failed to pursue the course of its malevolent intent.43

Similarly, nearly every hero survives the dragon fight in the medieval tradition. There are practical narratological reasons behind this: in most dragon texts, the dragon's human opponent is also the plot's protagonist; if the hero were to die instead of the dragon the result would be a plot without a primary actant.

The dragon functions as the hero's adversary by posing a distinct physical threat to society-a function that is accented by the dragon's antisocial habitat: the dragon must come from wilderness to a social group in order to attack it. Its ontological status as an outsider achieves thematic significance as a direct result.44 Corresponding to the hero's benevolent distribution of wealth, the dragon's adversarial relationship with the hero is exemplified in its malevolent hoarding of treasure. Again, just as the dragon's physical features demarcate it from the human warrior, its characteristic behaviors distinguish it as non- and antiheroic-i.e., as a villain. All these distinctions are evident at the microscopic level of the semantic features associated with hero and dragon; their implications for the course of the narration are of essential thematic significance.

As long as these distinctions are kept abundantly clear, they are useful in a plot whose outcome affirms the heroic ethos. But when they become ambiguous-when the rules are broken-the heroic message is subverted, and rival messages, systematically suppressed in overtly heroic texts, threaten to overtake and cancel it. This ambiguity occurs, as it can only occur, in the microtext-in elementary features conveying distinctions between hero and villain, human and monster-and in the macrotextual level of narrative proposition and plot. The ambiguous allocation of semantic features defining dragon and hero occurs in two main semantic fields: the subset describing the dragon's cognitive, emotive, and volitional

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capacities, and the subset that describes the dragon as a hoard guardian. Each microproposition of a dragon-slayer episode based on one or more elements of the /dragon/ semantic set finds its macrostructural function in the hero/dragon oppostion, and the thematic message thus generated validates the heroic status of the victorious warrior.

For example, the dragon-slayer episode in Sigurcar saga P9gla45 tests the structural limits of the code governing its composition. It accomplishes this primarily through the inclusion of two digressive passages that represent extensions of the structural segments of the episode. As such, inclusion and extension do not violate rules of the dragon code, and the dragon-slayer episode in this saga is thus a "normal" one. This episode establishes Sigurcdr's valor for the first time in the text, and the length and content of the extended segments reinforces the message through extension.

Sigurdr, the shyest of the three sons of the Saxon King Lodiviks, is indeed so quiet as to earn the epithet hinn]Qgli, "the silent." Most despised by the king and court for his apparent lack of heroic prowess, he is nonetheless the most-beloved of his mother, and she prophesies a change of behavior in her son. And, indeed, at the age of eighteen Sigurdr undertakes the dragon- slaying adventure that launches his career. The episode in which this is narrated thus plays the crucial function of establishing, for the first time, the heroic character of the young warrior. This overt thematic purpose is then reinforced by the extension and expansion of the preparation segment by adding a long (225-word) digression on the pedigree of the sword that Sigurdr uses in the battle. A later digression on the natural gifts of the lion which Sigurdr rescues from the dragon's clutches also interrupts the advancement of the plot,46 but both serve the purpose of emphasizing the protagonist's heroic stature by lengthening the arming segment and by obviating any possible confusion of the role of the lion (a beast, = nonhuman) with that of the dragon (a monster, also = nonhuman). Neither should it go unnoticed that the eponymous hero of this saga bears the name of a legendary dragon-slayer whose opponent, Fafnir, is a human/dragon and whose dragon-slaying exploit achieved mythological significance in early Germanic culture.

Thicdrek's dragon-slaying episode in Thiitreks saga heightens focus on the reward segment. While the treasure there described is not the most magnificent one in the Old Norse texts, it is important, not only for the richness of its detail, but also for its significance in the logic of the plot. The treasure that Thid7rek finds upon slaying the dragons in a mountain cave is not merely a golden hoard:

. . ok nu ser hann hvar liggr oil herneskia. bar tekr hann oil vopn ok klaedi. gekk sidaan ut ok up or dalnum. Nu ser hann hvilik eru bessi vopn er hann

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hefir fundit. ~essi brynia er hvit sem silfr ok skiolldr lagdr mec gull. hann hefir fengit einn hialm er skygdr er sem gler. par standa i fimm karbunkli steinar ofan i koppnum, ok alldri sa hann meira grip i einum hialmi.47

[... and now he saw where the armor lay. He took all the weapons and clothing. He went out and up from the dale. Then he saw of what kind these weapons were which he had gotten. The corselet was white as silver and the shield inlaid with gold. He found a helmet that was polished as glass. There were five gems of carbuncle set in it atop the helmet's crown, and never had he seen more value in one helmet.]

The effect of this level of specificity emerges when it is compared with other texts in which the reward slot is filled by the single word gull [gold] in a single sentence narrating the hero's discovery of the treasure. The details given in the passage bring the treasure into high focus not only to emphasize its monetary value-which is itself significant-but also to perform two plot functions. It links Thidtrek's dragon-slaying adventure with Hertnid's unsuccessful attempt to slay the dragons immediately preceding it in the text, and it provides Thidrek with the ability to masquerade as the dead Hertnid in the material that immediately follows it. Since the former king's retainers, foes, and-importantly-his wife know this particular set of arms to be that of their lost king, they allow Thirek to pass unhindered into the heart of Hertnid's realm where he rescues Queen Isolld from besieging enemies. Thidtrek then marries her and receives, as a further consequence of his dragon-slaying success, the lost Hertnid's kingdom-and a wife-as reward.

This raises the question immediately of Hertnid's failed dragon-slaying adventure. Hertnit's death provides the only occasion in Old Norse in which a dragon-fight climaxes with the warrior's death rather than that of the dragon-an unlikely theoretical possibility mentioned earlier. (It is, of course, precisely what happens in Beowulf, which we will consider below.) The immediate effect of this grisly episode is powerful indeed. Everything the audience carries to the passage strongly suggests that Hertnid, like all his illustrious dragon-fighting colleagues, will succeed. His failure conflicts strikingly with the normal pattern:

Hertnid konungr ridr at drekanum meir af kappi ok metnadi en af vitrleik. firir Pvi at kessi dreki er sua styrkr, at Pegar er peir koma saman. tekr drekin hann med sinum klom ok flygr med hann i einn diupan dal. ok Par er eitt berg ok einn hellir mikill. Ok par a tessi dreki .iii. unga. hann kastar konungi daudum firir pa. keir eta hans holld allt af beinum. en drekinn rotar i brott ollum hans vapnum ok beinum or sinu boeli.48

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[HertnidT the king rode against the dragon more from valiance and pride than wisdom, for this dragon was so strong that when they came together, the dragon took him with its claw and flew with him into a deep dale. There was a cliff and a large cave. This dragon had three young ones there; it cast the king down dead before them and they ate the flesh completely off his bones. The dragons routed all his weapons and his bones from its den.]

Hertnid's failure-the only one of its kind in the corpus-seems tragic, until the reader realizes that Hertnid is a victim whose purpose is to set Thidrek's successful dragon-slaying in higher relief. In Proppian terms, this merely represents the negation of a function, but it could not have occurred had HertnicTbeen the protagonist of this saga; as, indeed, Thicdrek himself must survive if the heroic theme of the text is to be realized.

Other sagas contain dragon episodes that in various ways test the limits of the episode's conventional structure: in Konralts saga, for example, there are two dragon episodes. The first follows the traditional pattern of preparation, travel, combat, slaying, and reward, with a rescue much as in Erex saga (though in this case a lion is rescued, not another knight). In the second, however, Konrat does not do battle with the dragons at all, but achieves success through his acrobatic skill: he steals the gem-stones that form the

goal of his mission and eludes the enraged dragons before they can do him

physical harm.49 Egils saga ends with an absent dragon episode: Egil disappears with his treasure-casks; hauga-eldr [howe-fire] is later seen there.

Egil himself does not die until sometime later, and the traditional association between funereal hoards, interred humans, and dragons is not

given in explanation of the hauga-eldr. While it is not offered textually, the

hypothetical vision of Egil's transformation into a dragon upon his concealed treasure looms large.50

The transformation of a man into a dragon possesses more than incidental value in Old Norse dragon lore. At the beginning, I referred to the

ambiguous image of the hero in Indo-European cultures: the hero's physical strength enables him to protect his society, but it also renders him a danger. Unbridled, this strength can be destructive; the hero's characteristics can make him seem as bestial as he is human. Germanic society, with its heavy emphasis on heroism, recognized this feature. As Einar Haugen has shown, the opposition between human and animal was one of the fundamental elements in the Germanic Weltanschauung;51 the mediation of this opposition is expressed in the ambiguous category of human-to-monster transformation. As Haugen points out, Fafnir is the best example. But there are a number of sagas in which the semantic ambiguity of the hero-or, rather, the opposition between human and monster-is not effectively suppressed but is, rather, foregrounded to thematic prominence. Curiously, this nearly

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always occurs in examples of a recurring plot pattern in which the hero

plunders or receives hoarded treasure as a reward for slaying the dragon. This connection is strong enough to have been designated a "motif" in the folklore index tradition; but what is important is not its indexability but rather its suggestion of the deeper significance of dragon lore and the

dragon-slayer legend in the cultural context in which it flourished. There are a number of dragon shape-shifters in the Old Norse texts, many

of which exhibit the semantic ambiguity without exploiting it for its rich thematic potential. In Baerings saga, for example, Baering's human

opponent Skadevalldr bursts

idrekaliki, sva ogvrlegs, at engi [eirra, er a landi voro, 1Porcdv igegn at sia.52

[into the shape of a dragon so horrible that no one who was on shore dared to look at it.]

But Baering's safety is ensured by a special garment that wards off the

dragon's poison and fire; the hero/dragon opposition thus becomes a

stalemate, and Skadevalldr changes back into human form to face his

opponent. Further transformations alter him from a human to an ox and back again, and he dies in his human body by Baering's sword. If any dramatic effect is derived through this series of transformations, it is short- lived. At the semantic level, the hero/dragon opposition is reduced by a

weakening of Skadevalldr's stability as an opposing character, and the line of demarcation between Baering and his foe is also obscured precisely at the

point at which the difference should be most clear. At the same time, the text does not promote this effect to the level of thematic significance, for this

episode satisfies all the requirements of a normal dragon-slayer text: the

preparation, travel, combat, slaying, and reward pattern is observed, with the only difference that the reward segment is unfilled. Even this deviation can be explained in light of the fact that the preparation slot is filled by a

proposition denoting spiritual preparation as well as physical arming: on the morning of the dragon fight, Baering hears Mass and receives Holy Communion. It may be that for Baering to receive physical reward for his valorous act would trivialize the spiritual significance of an adventure undertaken as an act of Christian chivalry. After defeating Skadevalldr, Baering svngv gvde lof [sang praise to God].

The dragon-slayings in Sbrla saga sterkr and Halfdanar saga Eysteins- syni53 are similarly underdeveloped from a thematic standpoint. At the end of a long battle scene between human combatants, Sbrli's opponent T6fi bursts into dragon shape and spews a lethal dose of poison at him; but even as he loses consciousness, Sorli hews the dragon asunder, whereupon it dies.

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The textual domain of T6fi's manifestation as a dragon is but six lines long. Of similar brevity is the domain of Harekr in Hailfdanar saga, where Harekr

changes into a flying dragon and is slain within seven lines by Grubs, Halfdan's retainer. Both of these texts exhibit an ambiguous line of demarcation between human and monster, but neither makes much of it. No treasure is mentioned, and both the martial and ontological status of the

dragons are deemphasized. Though the slaying slot in each episode is filled, in neither case does the dragon-slaying episode achieve anything like narrative or thematic complexity. The heroic code is fully authorized by the

texts, and while this authorization is not interesting from the standpoint of thematic depth, it serves as a superficial expression of the tendency for Germanic culture to mediate the opposition between human and dragon.

But in chapter 26 of Hilfdanar saga, which enjoys its own independent tradition as a separate text, Valspattr, and again in Gull-boris saga, in which further events surrounding Valr are narrated, the specific connection between golden treasure and shape-changing dragons is made explicit. After accumulating a large store of wealth, Valr takes up two great chests of

gold and leaps over a waterfall. He is followed by his sons Kotr and Kisi and two of their enemies, Gaukr and Haukr. They find a large cave beneath the

waterfall, and

. . kofucu ueir fedgar pangat; ok logdust a gullit, ok urdu at flugdrekum; ok hofdu hjalma a hofdum, en suerd undir baexlum, ok lagu peir par, til Pess at

Gull]orir a vann fossinn.54

[..... father and sons swam thither; and they lay down upon the gold and turned into flying dragons: and they had helmets on their heads, and swords under their shoulders (at their sides), and they lay there until Gull-Thorir made it to the waterfall.]

Hdlfdanar saga does not trace the events forward, but Gull-poris saga describes Thorir's battle against Valr and his sons. After extensive engi- neering designed to lower Thorir and his companions down into the waterfall and careful arming with belt, kirtle, gloves, knife, and rope (an extensive preparation), Thorir and his assistants undertake a complicated but successful battle against Valr and his sons. Though the treasure they take is not described in magnificent language, it is nevertheless a large one:

Nu aer at segia fra Pori ok hans felaugum at Peir afla sier mikils fiarr i hellinvm suo at pat var margra manna fullfeingi i gulli og morgum dyrgripum. aer suo sagt ar heir hafui aa pridia degi verit i Vals helli.55

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[Now to tell of Thorir and his companions: they took for themselves so much money in the cave that there was many a man's fill both in gold and in many precious treasures. It is said that they spent three full days in Valr's cave.]

Thorir and his companions climb out of the cave and draw their treasure up after them. When the booty has been divided, Thorir has his treasure locked in iron-bound chests.

That is the end of the dragon-slaying adventure. But Thorir's fate is described at the end of the saga. It is a provocative and curious story:

jorir bio aa loristadvm langa aefui ok atti annat bu i Hlid. Hann giordizt illr ok vdaell vidskiptis ae pvi meir aer hann aeldizt meir. Oat var sagt aeitt hvert svmar at Gudmundr son hans hafdi fallit i bardaga. aen Oat hafdi 1o logit verit. oori bra suo vid ]essi tidindi aer hann fretti at hann huarf a brott fra bui sinv ok vissi aeingi madr hvat af honum vaeri ordit aedr hann kom nidr. aen 3at hafva menn fyrir satt at hann hafve at dreka ordit ok hafi lagiz a gullkistvr sinar. hiaelzt Oat ok leingi sidan at menn sa dreka flivga ofan vm peim megin fra poristodvm ok Gvllfors aer kalladr ok ifir fiordinn i fiall jat aer stendr ifir baenum i Hlid.56

[Thorir lived at Thorirstead for a long time and had a second farm at Hlid. He became more evil and harder to deal with the older he got. It was said one summer that Gudmundr his son had fallen in battle, but that was a lie. Thorir took the news that he heard of that in such a manner that he went away from his home, and no one knew what became of him. But people consider it true that he became a dragon and lay upon his chests of gold. And that continued, for after that people saw a dragon flying down from Thorirstead on that side called Gullfors (Goldfall) over the fjord into the mountain that stands above the farmstead at Hlid.]

We cannot help but think of Egil and the end of the saga bearing his name. Here, the dragon transformation, which Egils saga only hints at then rejects, is fully realized. The semantic ambiguity in the distinction between human and dragon thus had the ultimate result of a wholesale reversal of dramatic role: the hero who slays a dragon becomes a dragon himself. With typical Icelandic moral realism, the character of Thorir is ambivalent; all that is needed for the process to come full circle is a sequel to this saga in which Thorir, now in dragon form, occupies the villain role as opponent against another dragon-slaying hero who, in his turn, comes to slay the dragon and claim the treasure as his own. Unfortunately, such a text seems not to exist.

Whether the transformation from human to dragon is the working out of

corrupt internal motives or the effect of cursed treasure is not made clear in

any of the texts that have been considered in the last few pages. But the famous example of the Nibelung hoard-which very explicitly bears an evil

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curse-suggests that the monstrous transformation originates in both curse and human moral frailty. Significantly, the Sigurd/Fafnir contest is the most ambiguous with respect to the nature and meaning of heroism of all the Old Norse dragon texts, and in all four versions, the human/monster opposition is mediated by Fafnir, the human/dragon.

The story of Sigurd's dragon-slaying describes the tragic effect upon all who desire the Nibelung gold. The preparation segment is manifest as

physical arming, in a segment of some complexity that includes Reginn's forging of Gramr, the sword Sigurd uses in the fight, and Sigurd's digging of a trench from which to launch his attack. Reginn and Sigurd travel to Gnitaheid, where the hero attacks the dragon, thrusting the sword into the monster's left side. The slaying segment is manifest at Fafnir's death, and the optional dismembering is manifest as Sigurd cuts out the dragon's heart

(though Reginn does this in the Poetic Edda). The hero plunders the

dragon's hoard, and thus receives reward before riding away to Hindarfjall. But the central oppostion that structures this episode is undermined by

Fafnir's transformation from human to dragon, and the investigation of the heroic code that this promotes contributes to the tragic sense of Sigurd's participation in a chain of events determined by a cursed treasure and an evil fate. The dragon-slaying episode functions macrostructurally as a critique of the tragic aspect of an ethos that consumes its own best men by enabling a man to achieve heroic valor only at the expense of the lives of others and, ultimately, of his own.

In all four versions of this episode, (Poetic Edda, Snorra Edda, Nornagests Pbattr, Volsunga saga), the conflict between dragon and hero is curiously one-sided. Despite the Volsunga saga's statement that the dragon fnyst eitri alla leiifyrir sik [blew poison all around before himself] and laust hann

hoftinu ok spor?tinum [lashed with head and tail], the battle is primarily a verbal one, an exchange of speech acts focusing on various aspects of the hero's status.57 The dialogue employs a series of assertions, corrections, and reassertions about heroic ethics. Each speaker tries to persuade the other of the underlying nature of heroic action; the two do battle primarily in the verbal rather than in the physical mode, and this permutation of the battle slot enables the episode to make some complex statements on the nature of heroism associated with dragon-slaying.

In much the same way that the Sigurd legend uses the hoard-guarding and shape-shifting elements of dragon lore as a basis upon which to accentuate tragic aspects of the heroic code, so Beowulf utilizes similar

expectations engendered by the dragon tradition to mount a critique of the heroic ethic.58 Beowulf and the dragon are described in remarkably similar terms. Both are guardians-Beowulf of his people (folces weard [guardian of the people], 2513; epelweard [guardian of the homeland], 2210); the

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dragon of the hoard (hordweard [hoard-guardian], 2293, 2302, 2554, 2593; the word also refers in line 1047 to a human, Hrod'gar, as an equivalent of

beag-gyfa [ring-giver], further obscuring the lexical differences between the human hero and the monstrous foe). This difference is obscured even more

by the fact that the dragon in this episode is sentient, capable of rational and emotional behavior (11. 2270,2298, 2305, 2307,2322, 2554, 2561,2593, 2689). Both are described before the battle in separate instances of the half-line ia

[taet] he gebolgen waes [then (that) he was enraged] (11. 2220; 2550), a half-line that refers elsewhere in the poem to Grendel (1. 723) and again to Beowulf (1. 1539). This ambiguity is represented grammatically in a sentence that exploits the possibility for a double antecedent of the pronoun he:

Stidtmod gestod wid steapne rond winia bealdor, da se wyrm gebeah snude tosomne; he on searwum bad. (2566-68)

[The lord of retainers stood resolutely by the high shield; the dragon coiled

quickly together; he waited in war-gear.]

He, a masculine pronoun, could have as antecedent the masculine nouns bealdor [lord] or wyrm [dragon]. Grammatically, he can be either Beowulf in his armor awaiting the dragon, or the dragon with scaly, armored flesh

awaiting the hero, or both. The text of Beowulf thus bears traces of the mediation between dragon and human, traces that are either not fully realized or perhaps consciously suppressed.

Beowulf and the Poetic Edda, the most important poetic texts in Old

English and Old Norse respectively, concern dragon-slayers. As such, they and their analogues bear witness to the fundamental status of the dragon- slayer in medieval Germanic culture. And to varying degrees, both use traditional lore concerning the dragon in a consideration of the heroic

ethos, toward which an ambivalent stance is the only one that does justice to the complexity of human experience.

The University of Georgia Athens

NOTES

1. Jacqueline Simpson, "Fifty British Dragon Tales: An Analysis," Folklore 89 (1978):79-93; British Dragons (London: B. T. Batsford, 1980).

2. Stith Thompson, The Folktale (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977).

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3. Katharine Briggs, A Dictionary of British Folktales in the English Language

(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1970). 4. See Ruth Berman, "Dragons for Tolkien and Lewis," Mythlore 39 (1984):

53-58. 5. ". . real dragons, essential both to the machinery and the ideas of a poem or

tale, are actually rare. If we omit from consideration the vast and vague Encircler of

the World, Midgards ormr, . .. we have but the dragon of the Volsungs, Fafnir, and

Beowulf's bane .... ," J. R. R. Tolkien, "Beowulf: The Monsters and the Critics,"

Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936): 253; rpt. Lewis Nicholson, An

Anthology of Beowulf Criticism (Notre Dame, Indiana: Notre Dame University Press, 1963), p. 59.

6. See my dissertation, "A Semiotic of the Old English Dragon" (Indiana University, 1984), Appendix, 235-428.

7. Inger M. Boberg, A Motif-Index of Early-Icelandic Literature (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1966), pp. 38-39.

8. Richard Bauman, "Conceptions of Folklore in the Development of Literary Semiotics," Semiotica 39 (1982):3. Also Verbal Art as Performance (Rowley, Mass.:

Newbury House, 1977). 9. Accounts of structural and literary semiotics are many; representative short

histories may be found in Terence Hawkes's Structuralism and Semiotics (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1977), Robert Scholes's Structural- ism and Literature (New Haven, Ct.: Yale University Press, 1974), Jonathan Culler's Structural Poetics (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1975).

10. Bauman, "Conceptions of Folklore," p. 7. 11. Ibid., p. 16. 12. Roman Jakobson, "Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics," in Style in

Language, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Boston: MIT Press, 1960); rpt. in Semiotics: An

Introductory Anthology, ed. Robert Innis (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1985), pp. 145-75. 13. Claude Levi-Strauss summarizes these and related shifts in the emergence of

structural paradigms in "Structural Analysis in Linguistics and Anthropology," in Semiotics: An Introductory Anthology, p. 112.

14. Stith Thompson, Motif-Index of Folk Literature (Bloomington: Indiana

University Press, 1955), pp. 11, 19. 15. Claude Bremond, "A Critique of the Motif," in French Literary Theory

Today, ed. Tzvetan Todorov, and tr. R. Carter (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 125-46.

16. Barbara Herrnstein Smith, "Narrative Versions, Narrative Theories" Critical

Inquiry 7 (1980): 213-36; rpt. in On Narrative, ed. W. J. T. Mitchell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). See also "Surfacing from the Deep," PTL: A

Journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory 2 (1977):151-82; rpt. in On the Margins of Discourse (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 157-202, where Smith

inveighs against the transformational/generative grammatical paradigm as a tool for analysis of narrative structure.

17. This perspective was introduced into folklore studies by Alan Dundes in "From Etic to Emic Units in the Structural Study of Folktales," Journal of American

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Jonathan D. Evans

Folklore 75 (1962): 95-102; rpt. in Alan Dundes, Analytic Essays in Folklore (The Hague: Mouton, 1975), pp. 61-72.

18. The standard work on applying functional analysis to human behavior including linguistics is Kenneth L. Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior, 2nd. ed. (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), but Walter A. Cook's Introduction to Tagmemic Analysis (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press, 1969) is handier. See also Kenneth L. Pike, Linguistic Concepts (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1982) and Text and Tagmeme (Norwood, N.J.: Ablex, 1983).

19. See, for example, Gerald Prince, A Grammar of Stories (The Hague: Mouton, 1973) and Narratology: The Form and Function of Narrative (Berlin and New York: Mouton, 1982). 20. Peter Haidu, "The Episode as Semiotic Module in Twelfth-Century Ro-

mance," Poetics Today 4 (1983):680: "The repetition of the modular elements acknowledges the functioning of the surface level of narrative grammar on the level of manifestation. This phenomenon suggests the possibility that a far greater consciousness of textual structure existed in the twelfth century than in more recent periods of literary history." 21. Donald K. Fry, "Old English Oral-Formulaic Scenes," Neophil 52 (1968):

48-53; "Some Esthetic Implications of a New Definition of the Formula," Neuphilologische Mitteilungen 69 (1968):516-22; "Themes and Type-Scenes in Elene," Speculum 44 (1969):35-45. 22. Susan Wittig, Stylistic and Narrative Structures in the Middle English

Romances (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1978). 23. Eugene Dorfman, The Narreme in the Medieval Romance Epic (Toronto:

University of Toronto Press, 1969). 24. See note 19 above. 25. Carol Clover, "Scene in Saga Composition," Archiv f6r Nordisk Filologi 89

(1974): 57-83; Richard Allen, Fire and Iron: Critical Approaches to Njails Saga (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971); Lars Lonnroth, Njals Saga: A Critical Introduction (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1976). 26. W. W. Ryding, Structure in Medieval Narrative (The Hague: Mouton, 1971),

pp. 9-10. 27. Elliott Van Kirk Dobbie, ed., The Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, vol. 4 of The

Anglo-Saxon Poetic Records (New York: Columbia University Press, 1942), p. 56: "Draca sceal on hlaewe, frod, fraetwum wlanc" (the dragon [shall be] on the hoard, proud of treasures). John Earle, Two of the Saxon Chronicles, 2 vols., (Oxford: Clarendon, 1865), vol. 1, 59: "Her waeron rede forebecna cumene ofer Nordhymbra land, and j folc earmlice bregdon . . . and waeron geseowene fyrene dracan on Pam lyfte fleogende" (In this year terrible portents were come over Northumberland, and the people suffered miserably . . . and fiery dragons were seen flying in the sky). 28. Foster W. Blaisdell, ed., Erex saga Artuskappa (Copenhagen: Munksgaard,

1965), pp. 48-51. 29. Foster W. Blaisdell, "The Composition of the Interpolated Chapter in Erex

Saga," Scandinavian Studies 36 (1964): 118-26.

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30. Sister Jane Aza Kalinke, "The Erex Saga and its Relation to Chretien de

Troyes Erec et Enide (unpublished dissertation, Indiana University, 1969), pp. 252-53. 31. Clover, p. 58; Allen, p. 65; Lonnroth, p. 45. In Theodore Andersson's The

Icelandic Family Saga (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), pp. 35ff; these are "episodes." 32. Evans, "A Semiotic of the Old English Dragon." 33. Einar Haugen, "The Mythological Structures of the Ancient Scandinavians:

Some Thoughts on Reading Dumezil," in To Honor Roman Jakobson: Essays on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), pp. 855-68; Claude Levi-Strauss, "The Structural Study of Myth," in Myth: A Symposium, ed. Thomas A. Sebeok (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1965), pp. 81-106. 34. William Empson, Seven Types of Ambiguity (New York: New Directions,

1966), p. 1. 35. Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,

1976), p. 267. 36. Jonathan Culler, Ferdinand de Saussure (New York: Penguin, 1976), p. 109. 37. Eco, A Theory, p. 265. 38. Ibid., p. 271. 39. Georges Dumezil, The Destiny of the Warrior, Alf Hiltebeitel, tr. (Chicago:

University of Chicago Press, 1970), pp. x, 74-78, 82-89; The Stakes of the Warrior, David Weeks, tr., ed. with intro. by Jaan Puhvel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). For a summary of Dumezil's thought on the subject of the warrior's status as sinner, see C. Scott Littleton, The New Comparative Mythology, 3rd. ed. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1982), pp. 118-28. 40. Edgar Polome, "Approaches to Germanic Mythology," in Myth in Indo-

European Antiquity, ed. Gerald James Larson, C. Scott Littleton, and Jaan Puhvel (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974), p. 63. 41. W. T. H. Jackson, The Hero and the King: An Epic Theme (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1982). 42. James M. Redfield, "Foreword," in Gregory Nagy, The Best of the Achaeans

(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979), p. ix. 43. This occurs particularly in children's literature in the late nineteenth and

twentieth centuries. See Ruth Berman, "Dragons for Tolkien and Lewis," Mythlore 39 (1984):53-58 and Ruth M. Stein, "The Changing Styles in Dragons," Elementary English 45 (1968):179-83 for an overview of dragons in children's literature; see my discussion of this subgenre in "The Dragon" in Mythical and Fabulous Creatures: A Source Book and Research Guide, ed. Malcolm South (Westport, Ct.: Greenwood Press, forthcoming). The phenomenon of the timid dragon started with Kenneth Grahame's "The Reluctant Dragon," in 1898. 44. Jackson, in The Hero and the King, describes the relationship between the

hero and the king as one between an insider and an outsider: the king occupies an epic center at his court, while the hero travels from court to court as an alien to the court. 45. Agnete Loth, ed., Sigurctar saga oogla, vol. 2 of Late Medieval Icelandic

Romances (Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1962-65), pp. 93-259.

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Jonathan D. Evans

46. This may be analogous to the textual phenomenon of "retardation" described as an element of saga-structure by Andersson in The Icelandic Family Saga, pp. 40-43. Such retardation may be seen as "not digressive, but insistent," a segment that "fixes the reader's interest on a single line of development" (p. 42). 47. C. R. Unger, ed., Thidriks saga af Bern (Christiania: Feilberg & Landmarks,

1853), pp. 352-53. 48. Ibid. 49. Gustaf Cederschiold, ed., Forns6gur Suirlanda (Lund: Berlings, 1884), pp.

73-77. 50. Sigurtr Nordal, ed., Egils saga Skalla Grimssonar (Reykjavik: Hid lslenzka

Fornritafelag, 1933), pp. 298-99. 51. Haugen, p. 865. 52. Cederschiold, p. 118-20. 53. C. C. Rafn, ed., Fornaldarsogur Noriturlanda (KQbenhavn, 1829-30), vol.3,

pp. 408-52; 519-58. 54. Ibid., Hdlfdanar saga, p. 558. 55. Kr. Kalund, ed., Gull-poris saga (K0benhavn: S. L. Mollers, 1898), pp. 11-14. 56. Ibid. 57. Gudni Jonsson, ed., Volsunga saga. Fornaldar Sogur Norcturlanda, 3 vols.

(Reykjavik: Islendingasagnautgafan, 1954), vol. 1, pp. 150-56. 58. Quotations are from Friederich Kaeber's Beowulf and the Fight at Finnsburg,

3rd. ed. (Boston: D. C. Heath, 1950). The reading of Beowulf that this presupposes is

implicit in a number of comments made in Beowulf scholarship during the last few

years, ranging from mild to severe criticism of Beowulf's last exploit. The details of the argument are too complex to warrant rehearsal here, but a good understanding of this critique may be gleaned from the following sources: Larry D. Benson, "The

Originality of Beowulf," in The Interpretation of Narrative, ed. Morton W. Bloomfield (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 1-43; Harry Berger, Jr., and Marshall Leicester, Jr., "Social Structure as Doom: The Limits of Heroism in Beowulf," in Old English Studies in Honour of John C. Pope, ed. Robert B. Burlin and Edward B. Irving, Jr. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), pp. 44-50; John Halverson, "The World of Beowulf," Journal of English Literary History 36 (1969): 593-608; Edward B. Irving, Jr., A Reading of Beowulf (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968); Robert L. Kindrick, "Germanic Sapientia and the Heroic Ethos in Beowulf," Medievalia et Humanistica, NS, no. 10 (1981): 1-17; John Lyerle, "Beowulf the Hero and the King," Medium AEvum 34 (1965): 89-102; E. G. Stanley, "Haethenra Hyht in Beowulf," in Studies in Honor of Arthur G. Brodeur, ed. S. B. Greenfield (Eugene: University of Oregon Press, 1963), pp. 237-66. All of these grow out of a conception of heroism best expressed by J. R. R. Tolkien in "The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth, Beorhthelm's Son," Essays and Studies NS, no. 6 (1953):1-18.

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folklore and semiotics || semiotics and traditional lore: the medieval dragon tradition

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