ABSTRACT.

In this thesis I will discuss the origins of the dragon, what is was and what it has become, using literary interpretations from the ancient, medieval, and Early Modern periods. The dragon has rarely been previously investigated for its own sake in different literary genres, and I intend to remedy this. The dragon is the focus of the thesis, bringing it to the forefront of my research.
Beginning in the earliest oral culture, twenty-first century BCE, the myths and legends which gave birth to this most enigmatic of creatures spread through Asia to Europe and beyond. The Classical-era literature embraced and embellished the original oral retellings, setting them into texts, and reflecting both good and evil aspects of the beast, and giving it diverse physical appearances.
The biblical and medieval eras cast the dragon as the villain wishing to bring about the downfall of mankind, terrifying and hellish, whilst the Romance texts present a dragon that has to be defeated in order for a protagonist to proceed with a spiritual journey of self-knowledge and awareness. The Early Modern poet Edmund Spenser assigns yet a different role to the dragon – that of a political and religious enemy that must be vanquished to save a
Queen and a country.
Using hagiographies, poems and sermons from the medieval era, and poetry from the Early Modern, I have centred my thesis on the reason for the inclusion of a dragon, something which has seldom been addressed, and I believe my research will enable readings of these texts from a different perspective.
All these presentations and texts have been closely examined, and the material used reflects the diverse literary incarnations of the dragon, providing the answers to the questions set out at the beginning: where the dragon originated, what is it, and what makes it so important to the different literary genres researched for this study.