This book consists of six original essays concerning two popular
eschatological motifs of medieval Europe: the devouring devil,
especially in the guise of a dragon, and the zoomorphic mouth of hell,
arguably a distinctive English adaptation of the anthropomorphic
mouth of hell of classical antiquity. Over a time span ranging
from late antiquity to the late Middle Ages and stretching across
three languages, Latin, Old English, and Old Norse, the topos of
the devouring demonic monster, a veritable commonplace across
cultures and ages, is investigated in a variety of texts, including the
Holy Scripture, homiletic and hagiographic works by authors such
as Augustine of Hippo, Gregory the Great, and Ælfric of Eynsham,
and apocryphal writings, e.g. the Seven Heavens Apocryphon and
the Gospel of Nicodemus, especially its latter section, the Descensus
Christi ad inferos. By detailing the creative interaction of a wide
range of influences and the various practices of appropriation and
adaptation of a vast stock of source material, both ultimate and
intermediate, the contributions afford relevant case studies of the
densely interlingual and intertextual modes of textual production,
transmission, and reception in the European Middle Ages. Advancing
our understanding of the cultural and textual networks of the period,
this book will prove an important resource for anyone interested in
the dynamic process of mediation between past and present, pagan
and Christian, orthodoxy and apocrypha, exotic and local that makes
up medieval literary and figurative culture.
