And Yet, Here We Are

When my little brother got engaged, many many moons ago, I jokingly awarded him the title of 'Interim Elder Sibling' - since he was leapfrogging over me in milestones for adulthood. Never suspected at the time that my status as first-born could ever be in doubt.

Dragon Battle - Faerie Queene I.XI

Artwork by Trina Schart Hyman, from
Saint George and the Dragon, retold by Margaret Hodges.

I am not at all certain that this battle, though epic, is entirely meant to be taken seriously.  I'll address just a few points that occurred to me in reading Canto XI.

Making Mountains Out of Great Hills?

The showdown is bracketed with landscape-inflected similes, though there seems to be some 'inflation' here (from a great hill to a heaped mountain): 

Eftsoones that dreadfull Dragon they espide,
Where stretcht he lay vpon the sunny side,
Of a great hill, himselfe like a great hill. (4)^*

So downe he fell, and like an heaped mountain lay. (54)

We might be tempted to say the initial impression of the dragon as 'like a great hill' is merely due to distance, but I think it is telling that he lies like a great hill on the sunny side of a great hill.  Even at a distance, one ordinarily distinguishes between great hills and mountains.  He's not described as akin to a mountain on the side of a mountain.  It's 'great hills' all round, at the start.

Long-Shot Survival in the Cruell Rending Clawes 

In stanza 12, we learn the dragon's "cruell rending clawes" far exceed the sharpest steel:

Dead was it sure, as sure as death in deed,
What euer thing does touch his rauenous pawes,
Or what within his reach he euer drawes (12)

Well, that sounds pretty clear, doesn't it?  But after a fierce blow from our hero, the dragon is so annoyed, he takes to the air:

[...] he cutting way 
With his broad sayles, about him soared round: 
At last low stouping with vnweldie sway,
Snatcht vp both horse & Man, to beare them quite away. (18)

The dragon bears them "So farre as Ewghen bow a shaft may send" before he's forced to "let them downe before his flightes ende" (19).^†  

Spenser characterizes this journey as "Long," but just how far does a yew bow shoot?  Perhaps about 300 yards, it would seem.  

By way of comparison, the dragon's tail "of three furlongs does but little lacke" (11); that's a little less than 660 yards.  So the dragon bears knight and steed not even half as far as his own tail-length!!!  That's hardly a good show.

Moreover, despite the promise of stanza 12, knight and steed are still in fine fettle after being carried in the dragon's claws, and the knight is able to get in a good spear-thrust under the dragon's left wing (20)!

There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune

From the knight's most excellent spear-thrust, 

Forth flowed fresh
A gushing riuer of blacke goarie blood,
That drowned all the land, whereon he stood;
The streame thereof would driue a water-mill. (22)

Amazingly, the knight remains mounted on his steed despite dragon's blood gushing so powerfully that it would drive a water-mill; it's only when the dragon hurls his "hideous tayle" about that the steed gets knocked over and throws his rider (23).

And even as all the land drowns in the blacke goarie blood, the well of life – into which the knight will soon fall backward when "ouerthrowen" by the dragon (30) – fortunately remains completely untainted! 

A Dental Hygiene Nightmare?

Other little grace notes abound.  I like the contrast between the arguably bucolic scene of the dragon nestled like a great hill on a great hill ... and the shark-like configuration of the dragon's teeth: "Three rankes of yron teeth enraunged were, / In which yet trickling bloud and gobbets raw / Of late deuoured bodies did appear" (13).  

This dental hygiene nightmare is seemingly confirmed by the noxious cloud that comes "Out of his stinking gorge" filling "all the ayre about with smoke and stench" (id.).

FOOTNOTES:

^* On twitter, @virginicus connected this somewhat odd simile to one appearing in Neil Gaiman's SANDMAN #38 ("The Hunt").  Dialogue between grandfather and granddaughter:

[GF, telling story:] One day he took a handkerchief, and wrapped up his few possessions -- some tarnished bronze coins, a small bone that he had carved into the shape of a small bone, a thin wooden finger-ring his mother had left him...

[GD, interrupting:] A small bone that he had what?
[GF:] Carved into the shape of a small bone.
[GD:] But it was a small bone already.
[GF:] He carved it into the shape of a different small bone.  All right?

Specifically, @virginicus questioned whether this might have been "a jab at Spenser’s lame simile."  I have no idea of the truth of the matter, but I like to think he's right.

^† But I suppose in light of the interrupted flight (meaning he didn't reach his intended destination, whatever it may have been), we at least can absolve the dragon of selecting a ludicrously unwise battleground which contains both the well of life (30) and the tree of life (46) to restore his foe twice from death overnight.