From Twelve Devouring Dragons to the Develes Ers: The Medieval History of an Apocryphal Punitive Motif

Author / Editor
Kabir, Ananya Jahanara.

Title
From Twelve Devouring Dragons to the Develes Ers: The Medieval History of an Apocryphal Punitive Motif

Published
Archiv 238: 280-98. , 2001.

Description
Traces the history of the motif of infernal punishment in the devil's anus, suggesting that the earliest evidence of the motif is found in the "Seven Heavens Apocryphon" of Irish visionary tradition and that Chaucer's use of the motif in SumP derives from this tradition, perhaps inflected by the "Visio sancti Pauli."

Chaucer Subjects
Summoner and His Tale.
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations.