A Wilderness of Dragons

While dragons are in the air …

An extract from my book, Desiring Dragons. #StGeorgesDay #Tolkien #Fantasy #dragons

In the eponymous essay, reprinted in The Monsters and The Critics (2006), Tolkien cited the Beowulfian critic Professor Chambers’ phrase ‘a wilderness of dragons’ ²⁹⁸. Tolkien, punctilious as ever when it comes to language, queries the ‘Shylockian plural’, and yet it is clear he would prefer such a hazardous place to the bleak territory of the unimaginative critic. It clearly stuck in his mind, and perhaps acted as grit in the oyster for his creation of the ‘desolation of Smaug’, in the map for The Hobbit (1937) – a blasted wasteland on the edge of the cosy world of the hobbits.

This is a deliberate striking out into unchartered zones.

On the borders of medieval maps, where human knowledge ran out and reason slept, monsters stirred: ‘Here Be Dragons’ the legend read. This is the direct descendant of the primal fear which lurked outside the circle of firelight for…