Here there be dragons. According to a common piece of folklore, that inscription appears at the margins of maps in the olden days. What it really signifies is, “Here is the limit of the known. Beyond this boundary lies the unknown, symbolized by the figure of the dragon, mysterious, ominous, sublime.” The question for this newsletter is, why? Why the ubiquity of dragons, from ancient times to the present? In our time, the dragon is associated with the story form we call fantasy, the modern version of the older genre of romance (in the literary, not the commercial sense), so much so that it has become almost an emblem of fantasy itself, at least that type of fantasy, sometimes called “high fantasy,” which exploded into popularity with
April 8, 2022
April 8, 2022
April 8, 2022
Here there be dragons. According to a common piece of folklore, that inscription appears at the margins of maps in the olden days. What it really signifies is, “Here is the limit of the known. Beyond this boundary lies the unknown, symbolized by the figure of the dragon, mysterious, ominous, sublime.” The question for this newsletter is, why? Why the ubiquity of dragons, from ancient times to the present? In our time, the dragon is associated with the story form we call fantasy, the modern version of the older genre of romance (in the literary, not the commercial sense), so much so that it has become almost an emblem of fantasy itself, at least that type of fantasy, sometimes called “high fantasy,” which exploded into popularity with