This presentation will explore the mythology of dragon slayers in relationship to the Nordic traditions drawn upon by Jung, Wagner, Tolkien, and others. It focuses on visual artefacts—the Siegfried stones and Stave Churches in Scandinavia, and the images of Jung's Red Book—alongside literary versions of the "battle with the monster" in Beowulf and the Volusungs Saga, amplified by dreams and theoretical perspectives.
Dr. Evans Lansing Smith has degrees from Williams College, Antioch International, and The Claremont Graduate School. He is the author of ten books and numerous articles on comparative literature and mythology, and has taught at colleges in Switzerland, Maryland, Texas, and California, and at the C.G. Jung Institute in Kusnacht. In the late 1970s, he traveled with Joseph Campbell on study tours of Northern France, Egypt, and Kenya, with a focus on the Arthurian Romances of the Middle Ages and the Mythologies of the Ancient World. His areas of emphasis include: Myth in Literature from Antiquity to Postmodernism; Arthurian Romances, and The Hermetic Tradition. He currently teaches: Myth and the Underworld; Alchemy and Hermeticism; Arthurian Romances and the Grail; Folklore and Fairytales; Theoretical Approaches to Mythological Studies; Cultural Mythologies; and Native Mythologies of the Americas.
