Sources for in the Tradition of Saint George

Paul L. Sawyer, Professor of English, Cornell University

Footnote 2, Chapter 12, of the author's Ruskin's Poetic Argument: The Design of the Major Works, which Cornell University Press published in 1985. It appears in the Victorian web with the kind permission of the author, who of course retains copyright.

For the St. George tradition in English literature, see, for example, Northrop Frye: "St. George's mission, a repetition of that of Christ, is by killing the dragon to raise Eden in the wilderness and restore England to the status of Eden. The association of an ideal England with Eden, assisted by legends of a happy island in the western ocean and by the similarity of the Hesperides story to that of Eden, runs through English literature at least... to Blake's 'Jerusalem' hymn" (Anatomy of Criticism [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957], 194).

Last modified December 2000