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Book Review

How to Kill a Dragon

Aspects of Indo-European Poetics

Thursday 28 December 2006

In How to Kill a Dragon Calvert Watkins follows the continuum of poetic formulae in Indo-European languages, from Old Hittite to medieval Irish. He uses the comparative method to reconstruct traditional poetic formulae of considerable complexity that stretch as far back as the original common language. Thus, Watkins reveals the antiquity and tenacity of the Indo-European poetic tradition.

 

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Persian Carpet
Detail — “The Raven Addresses the Assembled Animals”
Circa 1590, ascribed to Miskin. British Museum, London.

Watkins begins this study with an introduction to the field of comparative Indo-European poetics; he explores the Saussurian notions of synchrony and diachrony, and locates the various Indo-European traditions and ideologies of the spoken word. Further, his overview presents case studies on the forms of verbal art, with selected texts drawn from Indic, Iranian, Greek, Latin, Hittite, Armenian, Celtic, and Germanic languages.

In the remainder of the book, Watkins examines in detail the structure of the dragon/serpent-slaying myths, which recur in various guises throughout the Indo-European poetic tradition. He finds the “signature” formula for the myth — the divine hero who slays the serpent or overcomes adversaries — occurs in the same linguistic form in a wide range of sources and over millennia, including Old and Middle Iranian holy books, Greek epic, Celtic and Germanic sagas, down to Armenian oral folk epic of the last century.

Watkins argues that this formula is the vehicle for the central theme of a proto-text, and a central part of the symbolic culture of speakers of the Proto-Indo-European language: the relation of humans to their universe, the values and expectations of their society. Therefore, he further argues, poetry was a social necessity for Indo- European society, where the poet could confer on patrons what they and their culture valued above all else: “imperishable fame”.

Calvert Watkins is now Professor-in-Residence, Department of Classics and Program in Indo-European Studies, UCLA. He lives in Los Angeles. He is interested in the Linguistics and the Poetics of all the earlier Indo-European languges and societies, particularly Greek, Latin and Italic, Celtic, especially Early Irish, Anatolian, especially Hittite and Luvian, Vedic Indic, and Old Iranian; historical linguistic theory and method; and Indo-European genetic comparative literature.

Calvert Watkins
How to Kill a Dragon: Aspects of Indo-European Poetics
Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed edition (May 17, 2001)
ISBN-10: 0195144139
ISBN-13: 978-0195144130

2 Forum messages

  • How to Kill a Dragon 22 January 2010 20:29, by BoB

    I read someplace that the volcano was refered to as the dragon in our ancient Persian history as well as in Irish stories. The dragon slayer was the man who would go up to top of the mountain to slay the dragon and save the virgin girl.
    In the old Hawaiian and many other ancient cultures, people had no scientific explanation for natural phenomena, so they created myths, and also sacrified virgins to the Gods.
    In ancient Persia the young were promised and may be the kings, held the young girl who these young men were in love with hostage so the young men have a motivation to go up the mountain and finish off a volcano. When a volcano was at it last phase and only smoking and poluting the air, darkening the sky, the young men would go up to the tip of the carter and drop goat skins wich were filled with naphta or oil into the volcano, which would act as a cocktail molotof and exploded inside the crater. The wall of the crater would fall in and the volcano would be burried in dirt, thus the source of the smoke would diminish. The dangers involved for a young man to do something like this were tremendous, death being one of them. The volcanic gases were made up of deadly hydrogen sulfides which made the jeourney not successful for many young men. I think the goat skins were also used as a source of air as well to get up there and complete this dangerous task, where oxygen was limited in the altitudes.
    Thus the name dragon slayer was created as the dragon was only a metaphor for the volcano that emiited fire and smoke. The poets and story tellers had to make the journey look fascinating and exiting for the next generation.
    There were no dragons that emitted fire from their mouths. We know that now. Although there are not many skeletons of large serphants discovered, an indication that there were very very large serphants existing as well, but none with fire and smoke emitting capability.

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  • How to Kill a Dragon 24 April 2012 05:09, by slayers of dragon slayers

    The male patriarch killed dragons because it represented all things YIn (feminine or female). The slayers have now returned to kill the killers of dragons.

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