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Hesperides
(redirected from Hesperidean)

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Hesperides (hĕspĕr`ĭdēz), in Greek mythology, daughters of Atlas. They lived in a fabulous garden located at the western extremity of the world. There they guarded (with the aid of the dragon Ladon) a tree that bore golden apples. Hercules killed the dragon and obtained the apples as one of his 12 labors.


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In this sense, Harry can be compared to the dragon-slayers of myth and legend who seek a marvelous treasure guarded by a vicious dragon, such as Jason and the dragon of the Golden Fleece, Hercules and the Hesperidean dragon, or Beowulf and the unnamed dragon he encounters in his final adventure.
To English Jews Thomas Arnold must have seemed a Hesperidean dragon trying to preserve what Tennyson called, in a poem of 1832, "the treasure/Of the wisdom of the West" from barbarous intruders, a bigot denying them full rights of academic citizenship.
Tolkien refers to the caldron of story, but for what happened in Lewis's mind to such Hesperidean images, picked up largely in his reading (though not exclusively literary in origin), I prefer the metaphor of a crucible or alembic.
 
 
 
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