Review : Dragons, Heroes, Myths and Magic (I)

I saw Chantry Westwell's Maidens or Monsters ? in a bookshop and immediately wanted it. But then I found she'd done a similar effort, replete with beautiful medieval illustrations on almost every page, on frickin' dragons and I immediately wanted that one more.

Dragons, Heroes, Myths & Magic : The Medieval Art of Storytelling is near-impossible to find in hardback. Fortunately the paperback edition is abundant and of such physical quality that I didn't feel I'd missed out on anything. From the British Library, this is a excellent coffee-table piece but one you can also read without feeling self-indulgent. You'll buy it for the pretty pictures, but stay for the description and analysis.

Westwell writes in almost entirely neutral tones with the utmost clarity. Her text largely serves to explain the story behind the chosen pictures, both the original (often mythological) tales and how they were variously interpreted by the medieval audience. This she does superbly well. The only thing I felt was lacking was much in the way of the practicalities of how the art was generated and an analysis of the visual style : the classic question, "why does medieval art look like that ?" being hard to avoid. To be fair, the book is relatively hefty for its 360-odd pages even in paperback, so adding in even more is probably asking too much. Still, a note about the size of the images known – just to convey the sense of detail that bit better – would have been nice.

There are a couple of minor points which made me just a little bit skeptical, however. Westwell claims that the story of Beddgelert was Irish but set in Wales. This is a story I've known since childhood, but never have I heard of an Irish origin and nor can I unearth any other references to such a thing – despite extensive searching with both Google, ChatGPT and DeepSeek (they don't even hallucinate such a notion). Similarly, the claim that the first recorded elephant in Britain was in the medieval era omits the rather famous story of the Emperor Claudius riding one to impress (or oppress) the hapless locals. 

But these are two minor niggles in a 360 page book. I could try and give it a rating, but somehow that feels inappropriate. Westwell aims for breadth rather than depth, but taken as a whole this gives quite the insight into the medieval mind. She lets this come through implicitly in the stories and images, rather than being an overtly analytical work. The final result is something captivating, and if you're looking for a glimpse behind the curtain, this is a book for you. At last something that explains what so many of those fantastic, bizarre, hideous, beautiful medieval illustrations actually meant ! Huge kudos to the author for that, and I've got Maidens ready to read in due course.

Why does this work so well ? As with all examination of past fiction, stories matter. Stories are an insight into people's hopes, their dreams and their fears. They show how they thought the world worked, how they thought it should be, and what they were desperate to avoid... sometimes all at once. Both the differences and similarities to our own perspective are fascinating. There are moments of uncanny similarity and aspects which are unintelligibly alien. Coupled with the visual imagery the effect is only enhanced : the graphic depictions can clarify or confuse in equal measure. To try and understand, even if only to a small degree, the world views of the people who lived in an age of dragons and death, fire and fountains, is a thoroughly rewarding experience that goes far beyond the political or military histories of the era.

Summarising this one is difficult. The stories (and Westwell's commentary) are interesting in themselves, but so too, independently, are the artistic choices of the images. I've gone for a two-part approach, first looking exclusively at the stories and then next time attempting to offer some artistic commentary on the images.

1) The Stories

One thing that comes across almost immediately is how many of these are from the Greek or Roman era, with a smattering of tales from other times and regions beyond medieval Europe itself. This is very far from the popular image of medieval fundamentalists; as Erasmus pointed out, it would be absurd to reject wisdom just because of its pagan origin. Of course there were zealots aplenty, then as now, but most ordinary people had no problem enjoying the earlier stories – or even inventing new ones set in similar pagan worlds of gods and monsters.

For example, the "nine worthies", the great and the good according to the medieval scholars, included three Christians, three Jews, and three pagans. Compared to the popular image of every medieval person being a witch-burning fanatic, this all looks really rather inclusive, even progressive. Or consider the romances of Alexander the Great, a sort of Alexandrian Expanded Universe about what would have happened had he not turned his army around and kept on exploring/conquering, to the very limits of the sea and the sky... or even to northern Europe, where he helped sort out the chaos of early Britain. One of his attendees goes on to create a semi-Utopian realm which admittedly becomes monotheistic, but magical, distinctly pagan deities abound beyond its borders.

The point is, the medieval mindset had no problem whatever with incorporating pagan thinking into its fiction (and indeed into everyday life). Monotheistic Church doctrine as an all-consuming way of life... well, it just didn't happen.

Which is not to say that Christianity had no influence at all. For example, whereas the Amazons of ancient Greek legends were subversive renegades that went against the established social order, Westwell says that the medieval authors preferred them to be chaste and virtuous images of womanly perfection. Such an attitude was found elsewhere too. The unicorn might have been seen as a symbol of purity and strength, but the Holy Grail – which can only be obtained by those of a truly noble heart – shared more than a little of its character*, but with a distinctly Christian bent.

* Interestingly, the grail story of Percival begins in an almost identical way to that of notorious Welsh git Peredur. But whereas Peredur encounters a castle in which dinner is served alongside a bloody lance and a decapitated head (much to everyone's dismay), in the Percival story the grail is also present and the symbolism made obvious. No such explanations are forthcoming in the Mabinogion; I suspect I should re-read that but in an edition with plenty of expert commentary.

Other cultural influences are also evident. You'd be hard pressed to read the Trojans as abject villains in the Iliad, but you'd also find it tough to see the Greeks as being depicted in a bad light either. For medieval writers the situation had changed. Many myths had grown up around the Trojan survivors fleeing to found both Rome and Britain, so, despite the reverence for ancient Greek thinkers, now some of their greatest heroes were viewed with much more skepticism (especially, for some reason, the long-suffering Odysseus, who it seems didn't even get a break in his literary afterlife).

Moreover, thinking was far from homogenous. Alexander may have been one of the Nine Worthies, but that didn't stop Dante from depicting him deep in hell in a boiling river of blood for his warmongering crimes, or from others from declaring him a tyrant for imprisoning Darius' family (which seems a hell of a stretch given the standards of the time*). Then there are things like the Roman de la Rose, a bizarrely childish story that ends in blatant misogyny and overtly sexual allegory**; contrast that with Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies, chock-full full of advocacy for greater rights for women. Likewise the infamous story of Lancelot and Guinevere, containing its tantalising mixture of a knight par excellence who sinks to treachery out of love. Different writers chose to highlight different aspects of the story at different times, with the Mabinogion omitting the tediously boring (or at least hugely overdone) adultery bits altogether. 

* It also seems strange to me for Dante to put Caesar's murders in hell, given that the man was far more a tyrant than Alexander ever was.
** But also with a philosophical bent, musing on man's place in the natural world and discussing issues like predestination. Andrew Tate, take note.

While a good chunk of the stories here are Greco-Roman in origin, some are overtly Christian, including Bible stories. And I have to say that the stories as told here are far, far more interesting than the boring moralising sermons they taught us in school. Take David and Goliath, for instance. In school all we get is a poor little shepherd who kills a giant and that's it. We aren't told that he's previously killed lions with his bare hands. We certainly aren't told about he pervs his sexy future wife in the bath and has her husband killed ! Nor did we get anything of Judith, who dressed like a slut in order to slay the invading Assyrian king. All we ever got were figures of unblemished moral perfection, simple tales for simple people... here are stories altogether more complex and more interesting. No wonder Christianity had more appeal in the medieval age : they actually made it fun.

The other much more interesting bit of the Bible that they omitted from school completely was Armageddon, a crime for which I will never forgive them*. Missing this out from school assemblies is a bit like watching True Blood and skipping the sex scenes, or indeed the movie Armageddon but skipping all the action sequences... Anyway, it's full of multi-headed dragons, locusts the size of horses, demons that spawn frogs as evil spirits from their mouths and weird creatures galore. There is, of course, a heavy Christian dressing to all of this, with (bizarrely) Christ himself playing a crucial role in bringing it all about. But there are also many similarities to Norse myth, especially the series of escalating battles preceded by plagues – all followed by the descent of a New Jerusalem. At the very least, this battle between gods – emphasis on the plural, for this does all seem like very half-hearted monotheism – and monsters must have made converting the Norse relatively easy. The obvious difference is that in Armageddon the existing gods win (though you have to wonder why on earth a benevolent, omnipotent deity would allow such a thing to happen at all) whereas in Norse culture the outcome was at best less clear**. Nor has Armageddon usually been such a central part of Christian myth in the way that Ragnarok was to the Norse beliefs, though of course the earlier Christians probably got much more of all these crazy monsters than 20th century British schoolchildren did.

* Although obviously if you were unfortunate enough to have this taught by someone who actually believes in this nonsense as literal truth, you have my sympathies.
** In the previous Norse books I've looked at, the commentators and authors have added that the regeneration after Ragnarok might have been a post-Christian addition. I wonder if it isn't more the other way around, with Revelation drawing on earlier pagan ideas instead.

There are much lighter stories too, of course. One that deserves to be much more widely known, I think, is Guy of Warwick : a sort of middle-England Hercules whose multitudinous exploits include killing the huge Dun Cow, ten yards long and six yards wide, but also adventuring far and wide to win the woman of his heart's desire only to abandon her after a few months. Like Celtic stories, the motivations are often hard to follow, and his ending (variously bittersweet or outright tragic) doesn't fit much with modern-day storytelling techniques, which only serves to add to the fascination. Or the voyage of St Brendan, a wonderful story which is a sort of cross between Dante's Inferno and Homer's Odyssey; as with Guy of Warwick, motivations are largely overlooked and even the purpose of the journey is nowhere clearly stated.

Some of the tales are simply weird and wonderful. There's a story that Richard the Lionheart, for example, earned his epithet not simply by being as brave as a lion, but by plunging his hand down a lion's throat and tearing out its heart. Elsewhere lions are used in strange allegorical pseudo-natural histories : the lion's tail, says one, hides his tracks as Christ hid his divinity; lion's cubs, claimed another, were born dead but resurrected by Christ.

About the titular dragons there are not so many as I would like, but then I'd be happy if the whole book was nothing but dragons. What there is is interesting enough though. Besides the many-headed dragons of the apocalypse, there are various others (in minor roles) littered throughout the book. Westwell notes that the dragon underwent a critical evolution throughout the medieval period, beginning as enormous worms and serpents that fought with elephants, and ending as the fire-breathing winged reptiles that dominate modern depictions. Sizes varied considerably, from crocodile-sized (or even smaller, maybe only the size of a large dog) to horse or elephant-sized beasts.

The story of Saint George obviously gets a more detailed look-in. I noted when reviewing Penguin's Book of Dragons that George's threat not to kill the dragon unless the townspeople converted to Christianity as being distinctly... un-Christian in its messaging. Westwell's retelling contains this detail but she doesn't dwell on it. Instead, oddly in my opinion, she focuses instead on the king's offer to sacrifice himself in place of his daughter as being somehow surprising : "we are not told why he, and indeed the other parents, do not give their own lives and allow their children to live". I don't see why that wouldn't be a simple sense of self-preservation, and in the case of the king it would seem grossly irresponsible for him to throw his life away. The important thing is the anguish and regret; that people in such a situation would say they'd rather die but not actually choose to do so is, I think, a hugely realistic and compelling detail.

---

What do we learn from all this ? The playful inventiveness of the medieval mind, the enormous creative power and tolerance towards other beliefs all come forth in abundance. These people were no bunch of god-bothering fanatics : they were silly, explorative, funny, thoughtful, ordinary people living in what to them were ordinary times. They were far from a monolithic block but had diverse beliefs and disagreed sometimes on the most serious issues. Sometimes they killed each other in huge numbers for petty and stupid reasons; at other times they could be forgiving, welcoming, and liked nothing more than a silly joke and a big drink. Centuries later, perhaps not that much has changed.

That concludes this little review of the stories Westwell selected. As before, this reinforces my growing belief that Christianity's professed monotheism is essentially a sham – but shifts me away from the view of it being a wholly bland, goody-two-shoes bunch of happy praying people saying nothing of any real interest. Here are stories which are much more interesting than that, full of sex, violence and monsters, sometimes all at once. Here also is a religion wrestling with uncertainty about the future. It does, of course, have a distinctive flavour; it is not quite another pagan cult with unusual trappings : the moralising aspect of the stories is still front and centre in a way not found in most pagan stories at all. But strip that away, allow the stories to break free of their intended moral pronouncements, and what emerges is something far more complex and interesting.

Next time, in what will hopefully be a much shorter post, I'll try a different approach altogether and look at the imagery on offer, from the intricately beautiful abstract details to the bizarre nudity and derpy animals lurking in the background.