Fafnir (Jun 2014)
“Dragons are Tricksy”: The Uncanny Dragons of Children’s Literature
Abstract
As early as the sixties, scholars of children's literature have noted a trend to soften and satirize the dragon for children. This disconnect with traditional dragons has been bemoaned as ruining the mythic and archetypal power of dragons. Yet there may be more potent dragons lurking in children’s literature than readily apparent, due to one significant aspect of traditional Western dragon-lore: the eerie feeling or mood cast by a dragon. The original dragons of Germanic lore, from which many children’s literature dragons descended, were not just large scary beasts, but they also created a distinctly unsettling atmosphere in their stories. Modern tamed and human-like children’s literature dragons borrow certain uncanny qualities from the older generations of dragon-lore to become potent, if not always life-threatening characters. In specific, two traits borrowed from the original lore inspire uncanny doubling with their human counterparts: the dragons’ intensely possessive gaze and their clever, manipulative speech. This article analyzes these Freudian inheritances to argue that children’s literature dragons have not been entirely softened and satirized; the potential for uncanny fear embodied by the human-like behaviors of legendary Western dragons lingers in many modern children’s literature dragons. This potential reveals that dragons are still strong characters and can and should be analyzed productively through a Freudian uncanny lens.
