In "Not My Best Side" U A Fanthorpe challenges the traditional, stereotypical characters in the legend Of St George and the dragon only to replace them with another equally stereotypical

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Krupa Patel

In “Not My Best Side” U A Fanthorpe challenges the traditional, stereotypical characters in the legend Of St George and the dragon only to replace them with another equally stereotypical set

In the poem “Not my best side” U A Fanthorpe has challenged the orthodox images of the characters in Uccello’s painting of St George and the Dragon.  She has successfully manipulated them into modern day caricatures.

Through traditional stereotypical views and legends, Uccello has portrayed the fire-breathing dragon as grotesque and beastly.  Yet this is the dragon whom a boy no older than a teenager, can tame.  The poem contrasts any stereotypical view the reader may have taken and reveals that the dragon is no more innocent than the other characters.  In the first sentence of the first stanza, the reader is confronted by a dress conscientious victim of fashion; this is hardly a fire-breathing monster.  The dragon criticises all but himself, from the painter Uccello who, ”didn’t give me a chance to pose properly” to the, "horse with a deformed neck". Fanthorpe has given such a beast a pitiful personality the painter is described as a, "poor chap" however this is not an obvious reaction expected from such a beast. The phrases used by the dragon portray how the poem is the inverse of the painting itself.

The fact that the angle of the picture was not in his favour has proven to disappoint the dragon deeply but he forgets the fact that he is about to be defeated and overcomes this with an answer; "I always rise again".  The character is quick to point out such supposed absurdities as, “what, after all are two feet to a monster?” and how his conqueror travels on a horse, “with a deformed neck”.  His questions convey his unhappiness of being mocked, from his point of view his killers and victims appear to be blind, juvenile or ugly.  Not taking things, as seriously as he should, the dragon tends to ask rhetorical questions:  "should my conqueror be so ostentatiously beardless?" and, "Why should my victim be so unattractive as to be inedible?" The character does not think why they should take him anymore seriously than he is prepared to take them.

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Two diametrically opposed personalities, one from Uccello's painting of St George and the Dragon, the other from U A Fanthorpe's poem of "Not My Best Side" are never the less the same person. Painted unnaturally white and almost glowing, the young woman in the painting could be described as a symbol of virginity. She would be insulted to be given such a personality to the one in the poem where her casual sexual attitude is most noticeable in the double entendres: "wearing machinery" and, "see all his equipment" throughout the stanza.  How these phrases are interpreted, is up to ...

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