Abstract
Tales of great heroes overcoming great monsters have been a part of storytelling since time immemorial. Some of these tales follow recurring patterns, and one such pattern is that of ‘The Dragonslayer.’ From tales of Tristan and Iseult and Saint George and the Dragon, to the confrontation with the dragon Smaug in The Hobbit, ‘The Dragonslayer’ has been an enduring example of a recurring pattern in storytelling.
Different knowledge organization systems seek to arrange and connect texts and their recurring patterns in different ways. Folklorists look for recurring motifs and some wiki editors look for common tropes in texts. Motifs, tropes, and other storytelling patterns can all be thought of as types of memes, a unit of cultural inheritance which is analogous to genes in biology.
The meme of ‘The Dragonslayer’ can serve as a bridge between a variety of knowledge organization systems. This memetic approach may be the foundation of a new way of unifying disperate knowledge organization systems.
Recommended Citation
Mayhew, Alex
(2020)
"The Dragonslayer: Folktale Classification, Memetics, and Cataloguing,"
Proceedings from the Document Academy: Vol. 7
:
Iss.
1
, Article 3.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.35492/docam/7/1/3
Available at:
https://ideaexchange.uakron.edu/docam/vol7/iss1/3
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
10.35492/docam/7/1/3