> > I
> > started by worrying about Margaret's patronage of
> > childbirth, and the implicit analogy between childbirth and
> > her emergence from the dragon: so a woman would not only
> > have to identify with the dragon but expect to be burst
> > apart.
>
> Perhaps the analogy is being over-extended. I suspect that what was
> venerated was the process of life coming forth anew. After all St
> Christopher is good
> for travellers in general, not just those with rivers to cross.
Yes, I can see that - but still find it difficult to get
the exploding dragon out of my mind.
> >I still can't see what women might have got out of
> > this.
>
> me neither!
> (but can't you say much the same about all martyrs?)
Yes: for me it depends very much on how to read the
violence. Or perhaps you can ignore it, as Katherine Lewis
argues re St Katherine as a model for household management.
>
> > However, Katherine Group texts distinguish
> > consistently between female bodies and virgin bodies:
> > virgin bodies (I'd argue, and do elsewhere at length) are
> > actively produced in the course of the legend.
>
> is this in the forthcoming 'Versions of Virginity in Late Medieval
> England'?
Thanks for the plug: yes, and also an earlier version of
some of the material in 'Performing Virginity: Sex &
Violence in the Katherine Group', in Carlson & Weisl, eds.
Constructions of Widowhood and Virginity in the Middle
Ages.
> > The
> > dragon's often read as a masculine sexual oppressor on the
> > grounds of sexual symbolism - long pointy tongue - but if
> > we're going to take sexual symbolism into account, it
> > doesn't pierce, but engulf her.
>
> transgloti
>
> two loosely connected issues:
>
> they also seem to have a predilection for the young unsullied and female in
> the more popular texts
> which is a bit of a giveaway
Indeed: but if dragons do indeed come in male, female and
neutral varietites, presumably you have to listen for local
cues to determine which kind you're dealing with.
> and what about the teeth? Distinctly predatory I'd say...
Though it doesn't bite her, but swallows her whole.
>
> >
> > And yes, I'm sure you could make an analogous case for
> > Jonah's whale.
>
> this was pure speculation on my part: I wondered if anybody had actually
> done it!
Me too: would be very interested to hear if they have.
>
> I had only looked at french versions of St Marguerite - (all male dragons I
> fear) so I did some background reading on english versions after your last
> posting. The english versions seem very much bowdlerised and extemporised
> versions of the continental model. They are much more bloodthirsty than the
> french versions I have come across. Michael Winner rather than Walt Disney.
> Perhaps we Brits have always been Sun readers.
>
> Are they all like that? Or do people only write about the XXX versions?
> Does this apply to all saints' lives?
I'm the wrong person to anwser this, because I really only
know the English versions well enough - and was assuming
that bloodthirstiness is just a feature of the genre.
Would be interested to hear anyone else's comments on
national trends in hagiography.
>
> I have just been listening to the final version of the radio 4 adaptation of
> 'the Passion of Margery Kempe'. Trouble is it sounds just like an episode of
> the Archers a never-ending story of country life) which also has an
> eccentric lady called Margery ?Antropus who is married to a Robert (the
> scribe is called Father Robert in the adaptation). Most bizarre.
>
I enjoyed that: they didn't make Margery too bonkers,
though I think they did make her too rustic. Wasn't he
supposed to be Robert Spryngolde?
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