The Monstrous Fantastic Conference Paper Abstracts - International ...

modernity opens up for every individual, and the desire to escape from freedom…by any means possible” (10). By not engaging this fear offreedom, Berman neglects an examination of the effects of modernity on philosophical thought and human psychology. By looking at “Call ofCthulhu” as an interpretation of modernism, I hope to build on Berman’s project by examining this fear of freedom evident in conceptions ofscientific thought and religious ideology during modern times.133. (CYA) Playing with the Dragon Tradition Captiva AChair: Melissa SchuitSimmons CollegeTolkein and the Traditional Dragon StoryC.W. Sullivan IIIEast Carolina UniversityC.S. Lewis once wrote that we have ignored “story as story” as we pursued, among other approaches, the sociological analyses of fiction. In fewinstances has this been more evident than in the post-1966 attempts to delve into the “meaning(s)” of J.R.R. Tolkien’s most popular works, TheHobbit and The Lord of the Rings; fewer such analytical assessments have been attempted with The Silmarillion—and for good reason. But asBrian Rosebury has argued, and I believe cogently, modern and post-modern critical approaches to Tolkien’s fiction have yielded, at best, mixedresults. Following Rosebury’s argument, I would argue that we should return, building on the lead provided by C.S. Lewis, to the story itself andto Tolkien as a storyteller.This means looking at Tolkien not just as a storyteller but as a traditional storyteller. By traditional storyteller, I meanthe creators of oral narratives, from the anonymous poets who recited or chanted Beowulf, The Iliad, and The Odyssey to the unknown firsttellers of the Irish cycles and Welsh Mabinogi. As structural analysis has shown, these tales have essentially similar plots from era to era, fromculture to culture, but as performance analyses of contemporary tellers and singers have shown, each traditional teller shapes his narrative inan individual way, creating a variation on a formula. In other words, to best understand Tolkien as a traditional storyteller, we should use thecritical approaches that have proved profitable when applied to ancient, originally oral, narratives; for it is my argument that Tolkien was atraditional story teller in that ancient sense, the difference being that he was able to present his “oral narrative” in a modern medium—print.What such an approach will reveal, looking at the children’s literature classic, The Hobbit, for specific examples (although the same approachwill also work with the more adult-oriented The Lord of the Rings) is that Tolkien did, indeed, create a traditional story, a story with a structuresimilar to the structures of the ancient narratives mentioned above and that, at a certain point in his tale, he both fulfilled and departed fromthat ancient structure to create a narrative of his own, a traditional narrative that is also unique to its teller, its time, and its place.“No Idle Fancy”: Dragons as the Monstrous in Children’s LiteratureEmily MidkiffKansas State UniversityJ.R.R. Tolkien proudly declared dragons capable of bearing incredible significance to a work of literature in his famous essay on Beowulf in 1983.Since then many have studied the dragons of medieval writing, art, and modern fantasy, especially with a focus on the dragon’s potential as amonstrous mirror for questions of identity, fear, and heroism. Dragons in the context of children’s fantasy literature have been left relativelyuntouched however. This paper will argue that modern dragons in children’s literature have evolved to appear deceptively simple, and yetmany have strong ties to their literary ancestry that allow them to retain their mythical, universal resonance despite their apparent simplicity.The dragons in Pija Lindenbaum’s When Owen’s Mom Breathed Fire (2006), Boni Ashburn’s Hush, Little Dragon (2008) and Cressida Cowell’sHow to Train Your Dragon Vol. 1 (2010) serve as examples of seemingly simple dragons which really use centuries’ worth of cultural significanceto present basic stories that carry deep unspoken meaning intended for the conscious and unconscious interpretation of modern readers.These dragons all assume familiarity with legendary dragon qualities and are all recognizable as the creatures from legend, but they each revealcertain significant modifications in personality and behavior from the traditional dragon. Each book reveals active decisions on the part of theauthors and illustrators concerning which legendary dragon traits to keep and to dismiss. With these choices each dragon suggests distinctquestions of identity, fear, and heroism relevant for modern parent and child readers. As dragons are such prevalent literary figures inchildren’s literature and show no signs of going extinct, determining their meaning and use in the above texts provides a precedent for studyingother dragon-centered children’s books with an awareness of their place in the long history of the dragon in myth, legend, and literature.“Your Kindness Quite Undragons Me”: Gender (De)Construction in Nesbit and GrahameNicole Brugger-DethmersHollins UniversityGender has been widely acknowledged as a performative identity marker, and normative behavior associated with particular gender roles asculturally influenced. In this way, characters in children’s literature represent either an adherence to or a rejection of socially established roles.This paper proposes that “dragon” as a category is also a performative identity marker, and the titular characters of E. Nesbit’s “The Last of theDragons” and Kenneth Grahame’s “The Reluctant Dragon” function as reflective surfaces with which to examine gender construction. Ananalysis of these stories, with consideration for the historical background against which they were written, will seek to demonstrate that“dragon,” in these examples, exists as a place of category crisis, calling attention to not only the unstable gender identity of the dragoncharacters but also of the human male and female characters. These stories similarly reflect two different eras of cultural, national, andtechnological instability. Ultimately, they ask the reader to question culturally accepted notions of normative gender identities, and seem tosuggest that other markers of identity, normally thought to be inherent and fixed, may actually be performative as well.