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. 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.'' |
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