How does this exchange describe the chapter as a whole and its approach to the fantasy genre? What are the old parts? What are the new parts? Dragons, for instance, are a common presence in sword-and-sorcerer narratives. How do Delany's dragons differ from more-conventional dragons? How do they not differ? Is it significant that Delany's adventuring youth is a teenage girl, not a teenage boy, and that she encounters a woman storyteller, not a male one?
2. "Of Dragons" begins with a lengthy title, and an epigraph from the theorist Julia Kristeva. What is the meaning of the title, both what precedes and what follows the "or"? What does "sequence" have to do with "dragons," "mountains," and "sunken cities," each clearly located within the action of the chapter? What is "transhumance"? What is "The Violence of the Letter"? What dramatic change ("the violence") does language and naming ("the letter") catalyze?
What, finally, is the relationship between the Kristeva quotation and the chapter that follows?
3. "Of Dragons" offers a substantial commentary on "the story." Examine closely the comments Norema makes regarding the story she tells, and also Pryn's responses. Is a theory of narrative--of how a story should be told, and why stories should be told--being developed here? Why, for instance, does Norema tell several different versions of certain passages in the story, and why does this frustrate Pryn? Why does Norema observe that "it's very important to alert your listeners to the progress of their own reactions"? And why does she believe that "after lots more tales have been told . . . that won't be necessary"? Is she a model for the postmodern writer, and if so, how?
4. What, according to Norema, are the "things one cannot trust tales to provide"? What do those "things" suggest about the role and limits of storytelling in the "real world," and what it takes to leave a "young woman, like you, off to see the world, in good stead"?
5. As the chapter ends, and Pryn's encounter with Norema concludes, what gift does Pryn consider most valuable? What is the significance of that particular gift? What do Norema and Pryn both feel is the importance of written language?