Dragons in twentieth-century fiction

Two years after "The Reluctant Dragon," Edith Nesbit published The Book of Dragons, a collection of stories in which children encounter a variety of dragons and find ingenious ways of dealing with them (Nesbit 1972). The dragons are alarming but not seriously threatening. One escapes from a book and is tricked into going back inside. Another is captured and fed with bread and milk until its scales fall off and it turns into a cat. St George is appealed to by children dealing with a plague of dragons but he refuses to stir, although he gives some useful advice. In the last story (not published until 1925), the dragon becomes tame when treated with affection and eventually asks to be turned into an aeroplane, feeling itself to be distressingly old-fashioned. These stories build on tradition to the extent that the dragons provide a challenge which must be met if society is to prosper. But the champions are children (often a boy and girl working together), not warriors. Their success requires courage, but not in fighting: kindness and open minds are more important in these stories than strength.

Tolkien

Farmer Giles of Ham (1949) is unusual in the fiction of J. R. R. Tolkien in being set in recognisable parts of the British countryside, the Thames valley and the mountains of Wales. It tells the comic adventures of Farmer Giles, who defeats a giant and then a dragon, Chrysophylax, a fire-breathing, treasure-loving beast but a coward. The king's knights are not able to stand up to him but Farmer Giles does with the help of a magic sword, and the dragon is tamed not killed. He gives its name to Worminghall, the royal seat of the Little Kingdom, where the knights are known as the Wormwardens. The story has features reminiscent of many of the local legends recorded in British Dragons, especially in its explanations for local names and worthies (see Simpson 1980, Chaps 3 and 5; see also Shippey 1992, chap. 4 for a discussion of Tolkien's use of Oxfordshire place names and the creation of an idealised England in Farmer Giles).

Tolkien's best-known dragon is, of course, Smaug, in The Hobbit (1937), who is given one of the strongest portraits of any dragon in modern fiction. We are told a great deal about him before we ever meet him, of the fear and destruction he has caused and his greed for treasure. In his encounters with the hobbit, we discover also that he is loquacious, proud and cunning and that it is dangerous to look into his eyes. In much of this, Tolkien draws unmistakably on the traditions of Northern legend (see Simpson 1980, 25). Beowulf's dragon was a treasure guardian and so was Fafnir, whom Sigurd killed. The riddling talk between Smaug and the hobbit has its parallel in the dialogue between Fafnir and Sigurd, although that takes place after the death blow has been struck. So there is more to be gained and lost by the hobbit when he talks to the dragon, and the dramatic impact is greater accordingly.

Smaug is one of the most individual dragons in fiction; nevertheless, his basic function in the story is that of the traditional dragon, the evil enemy whose destruction brings about the happy ending. On the other hand, he is not killed by a hero fighting single-handed. He is shot by a bowman defending his town from attack, with the help of information provided by the hobbit. And the dragon's death does not remove all threats to peace or safety. The quarrels over his hoard lead to as much trouble and danger for the hobbit as Smaug did when he was alive. So the dragon is a traditional one but the world in which he lives is more complicated and there is less scope for straightforward heroism than in earlier tales.