Hal Johnson's Blog, page 38

Everywhere Dragons

We’re
used to dragons having wings and breathing fire, but in Medieval
Europe dragons often spit poison instead of fire, and usually have no
wings—sometimes they only have two legs!

In Chinese mythology, dragons are inevitably wingless, although they often can fly; others live in great palaces under water. They assume the form of humans at times. In the Chinese fairy tale “The Dragon Princess” (from The Chinese Fairy Book (1921), translated by Frederick H. Martens “after original sources”),...

Minerva/Athena

Ovid was a Roman, so in the Metamorphoses he used the Roman names for the gods, even when his story took place in Greece. Minerva is the Roman name for the Greek Athena. Neptune is the Roman name of the Greek Poseidon. In case you were wondering what was going on there.

The title of Ovids poem, Metamorphoses, comes from a Greek word meaning transformations. The focus of the poem stories of changes. In the tale of Medusa, for example, her petrifying gaze changes sticks into coral, and her...

Invisible Problems

Being invisible sounds like a sure-fire path to power, but H.G. Wells argues that its not actually as useful as it appears. Think of how easy it would be to get caught, even though you were invisible. If you walk through rain or fog, your outline will easily be seen. If you walk in snow or mud, your footprints will reveal your position. Anything you eat will show in your invisible belly, floating in air until your body gets a chance to digest it.

Dogs growl at you, for you still have the...

Honorable Mentions XI

Urgan from Tristram of Lyonesse by Algernon Charles Swinburne (1882): One the strongest of the sons of earth, a cruel giant in Medieval Wales.

Keats and His Tropes

When John Keats talks about a snakes freakish human mouth, he says it is a mouth with all its pearls complete. But hes not talking about pearls, of course. Even magic snakes dont have pearls in their mouths. Hes using a metaphor, comparing shiny white teeth to pearls.

You cant be a poet without a stock of metaphors, and Keats never stopped trying to be a poet until the day he died. So The Lamia is loaded with tropes, which is an old word that means different poetic turns of phrase, such as...

Two Ways to Read Jekyll and Hyde

The great Argentinian critic Jorge Luis Borges says that the problem with The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is that its supposed to be a mystery, but everyone who reads it nowadays already knows the solution. Readers in 1886 would have been surprised to learn that the title refers to one person, not two, but that twist has been spoiled for us now. Borges says that if you want to make a film adaptation of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, the first thing you should do is call it something...

From The Mummy!

As it went along it saw a dead cat lying in the street; and it knelt down and took the creature up, and kissed it, and lamented over it in such a strange way, and in such a strange language!

(Thats the mummy! He loves cats!)

The Further Adventures of Captain Nemo

Captain Nemo appears in another Jules Verne book, Mysterious Island (1874), and its only in this sequel that we learn things like Nemos real name and country or origin.

Nemos appearance in Mysterious Island comes as a surprise though, and near the end, so try to forget hes in it while youre reading the book.

Sorry about the spoiler.

Shakespeare’s Other Monster

Shakespeares final play, The Tempest (ca. 1610), takes place on a remote island that had once been populated only by a strange beast named Caliban. The child of a witch and the devil himself, Caliban is a freckled whelp, not honored with a human shape. Later arrivals at the island teach Caliban language and enslave himbut Caliban dreams of revenge

Over 250 years after The Tempest, the poet Robert Browning wrote Caliban upon Setebos (1864) in which Caliban talks abut the god he worships,...

The Westminster Alice

Alice is one of the most famous characters from nineteenth-century literature, and she has been borrowed and reused many times by later writers and artists. One of her most successful later appearances is in The Westminster Alice by Saki (1902), where she encounters contemporary politicians behaving as absurdly as characters from Wonderland. Some of Sakis references are confusing if you dont know much (who does?) about British politics from 1902, but his jokes still work. We might not...