Conclusion

Abstract

The brief Conclusion directs readers to the way in which the preceding book has addressed the questions set out in the Introduction, namely, whence the dragon familiar in the modern West derives, both in terms of its form and in terms of its typical narratives. The issue of form is chiefly addressed in Chapters 1, 3, 4, 5, and 10; that of the dragon’s typical narratives and associated motifs is chiefly addressed in Chapters 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, and 11. It is noted that, across the three major groups of narratives considered in the volume, those of Graeco-Roman antiquity, those of hagiography, and those of the medieval Germanic world, six core motifs are shared by all, namely: the dragon’s marauding nature, its fieriness, its pestilential breath, its cave-home, its control of a water-source, and, a less prominent one, its generation from a human corpse. Within its narrative, the dragon is a creature of destruction; beyond it, it is a creature of integration.