{"title":"Margaret and the Dragon: Lydgate's Adoption of the Apocryphal","authors":"Lesley Kordecki","doi":"10.5325/preternature.9.1.0053","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"abstract:In the rather strange life of Saint Margaret of Antioch in John Lydgate's fifteenth-century (ca. 1426) Middle English version, The Legend of Seynt Margarete, Margaret is swallowed by the Devil in the form of a dragon, but after she performs the sign of the cross, the creature bursts into pieces, freeing her. Although the pervasive Devil/dragon character in medieval texts may seem too reductively metaphoric for serious monster scholars today, it is useful to explore what this particular religious appearance can show us in our study of a significant creature \"other,\" the dragon—here encompassing patriarchy's ultimate gender other, the woman. I argue that the emblematic maneuver of this text, with its apocryphal detail of the dragon eating Margaret, although ostensibly written to inspire piety, also demonstrates the correspondence of marginalized others: a loquacious Devil/dragon and an articulate woman/saint.","PeriodicalId":41216,"journal":{"name":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","volume":"557 1","pages":"53 - 75"},"PeriodicalIF":0.1000,"publicationDate":"2020-02-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Preternature-Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5325/preternature.9.1.0053","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"HUMANITIES, MULTIDISCIPLINARY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
abstract:In the rather strange life of Saint Margaret of Antioch in John Lydgate's fifteenth-century (ca. 1426) Middle English version, The Legend of Seynt Margarete, Margaret is swallowed by the Devil in the form of a dragon, but after she performs the sign of the cross, the creature bursts into pieces, freeing her. Although the pervasive Devil/dragon character in medieval texts may seem too reductively metaphoric for serious monster scholars today, it is useful to explore what this particular religious appearance can show us in our study of a significant creature "other," the dragon—here encompassing patriarchy's ultimate gender other, the woman. I argue that the emblematic maneuver of this text, with its apocryphal detail of the dragon eating Margaret, although ostensibly written to inspire piety, also demonstrates the correspondence of marginalized others: a loquacious Devil/dragon and an articulate woman/saint.
在约翰·利德盖特(John Lydgate) 15世纪(约1426年)的中古英语版本《塞恩特·玛格丽特传奇》(the Legend of Seynt Margarete)中，安提阿圣玛格丽特(Saint Margaret of Antioch)相当奇怪的一生中，玛格丽特被魔鬼以龙的形式吞下，但在她做了十字架的手势后，魔鬼突然分裂成碎片，她获得了自由。尽管对于今天严肃的怪物学者来说，中世纪文本中普遍存在的魔鬼/龙角色似乎过于简化了隐喻，但在我们研究一个重要的生物“他者”(龙)时，探索这种特殊的宗教形象能向我们展示什么是有用的——在这里，龙包括了父权制的最终性别他者——女性。我认为，这篇文章的象征性手法，以及它关于龙吃掉玛格丽特的虚构细节，虽然表面上是为了激发虔诚，但也表明了被边缘化的其他人的对应关系:一个健谈的魔鬼/龙和一个能言善辩的女人/圣人。
期刊介绍：
Preternature provides an interdisciplinary, inclusive forum for the study of topics that stand in the liminal space between the known world and the inexplicable. The journal embraces a broad and dynamic definition of the preternatural that encompasses the weird and uncanny—magic, witchcraft, spiritualism, occultism, esotericism, demonology, monstrophy, and more, recognizing that the areas of magic, religion, and science are fluid and that their intersections should continue to be explored, contextualized, and challenged.
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