Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World by Tim Flight (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World by Tim Flight Scott Royle Tim Flight, Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World (London: Reaktion, 2021), 262 pp., 20 ills. The first book by author Tim Flight, Basilisks and Beowulf: Monsters in the Anglo-Saxon World, is a look into the various diabolic creatures that shared the land with the Anglo-Saxon peoples of medieval Britain. Flight presents a clear investigation of the origins, social utility, and Christian adoption of the various creatures that were said to plague the lands of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, including wolves, dragons, demons, and humanoids. The author takes special care to evidence how these monsters, and their homes, still influence our misunderstandings of the “other” and an ongoing weariness of the wild. After a very concise introduction, which includes pertinent historical remarks on Anglo-Saxon history, Flight’s first chapter, “The Map of Monsters,” geographically situates the coming chapters by providing an overview of the locations and habitations of monsters through both Graeco-Roman and Old English textual references, notably from The Wonders of the East, The Letters of Alexander to Aristotle, and the Liber monstrorum. It is in this section that the author demonstrates that a clear division between a civilized and uncivilized world existed in the cultures that influenced the Anglo-Saxons and that they readily adopted this division. As evidenced in their own writings, monsters were as much a part of the scenery for the Anglo-Saxons as any other natural wonder with “monsters [forming] part of the natural fauna of uncivilized places at the edge of the world” (61). In chapter 2, “Of Wolf and Man,” and chapter 3, “Hic Sunt Dracones,” Flight considers two of the most persistent monsters in the Anglo-Saxon world: the wolf and the dragon. Of the wolf, the author attests that the obvious nuisance of its preying upon the livestock of Anglo-Saxon farmers, combined with the viciousness of its attack, produced a supernatural fear of the animal. Despite the wolf’s acting within its own nature, the specimen was not only deemed a monster in the natural sense but one in opposition to that which is holy, with Flight saying that for this reason, “the wolf is both a monster and a diabolic creature” (73), one that dares defy the sanctity of God’s most innocent creations. While there is no evidence that dragons ever existed, Flight demonstrates in the next chapter that in the Anglo-Saxon world they were a very real fear and cited in numerous Old English texts. The author proposes that the perplexity of the dragon lends to its use as a device of otherness that encouraged a continued division between civilized and uncivilized lands, saying that “the dragon is able to fulfil [its] symbolic role because it is a monster of the pagan wilderness” (102). Ingrained into the mythology of the dragon is its greed, with many stories commenting on its lust for attaining and retaining gold in hidden underground lairs; Flight sees the Christian application in these stories as a means to thwart the sins of greed and lust with the threat of danger from a dragon being the deterrent warning, the dragon acting as a “monstrous symbol of avarice and warning to men about the consequences of committing the sin” (110). As the Anglo-Saxons rapidly converted to Christianity in the latter half of the first millennia, it comes as no surprise that another monster entered the psyche of that period: demons. In chapter 4, “Saints and Satanas,” Flight delves into how demons as monsters further demonstrate the division of the civilized and uncivilized worlds and how the dangers of the wilderness were interpreted as [End Page 228] malicious opposition from diabolical forces against the plight of the holy man. The author utilizes the examples of two famous Anglo-Saxon holy men who took flight to the wilds in search of contemplation and prayer but were met instead by demons; Guthlac of Crowland and Cuthbert of Lindisfarne. Guthlac, having chosen a home in the marshy fens of the woods, is accosted by demons in the wild; the afront isn’t physical, but...