Giants: Medieval Monster to Tabletop Terror

             It is unsurprising that the giant, a prevalent theme throughout medieval texts, as well as being described at length in Of Giants, Sex, Monsters and the Middle Ages, would appear in the popular roleplaying game Dungeons and Dragons. However, what may come as something of a surprise is the relative closeness these modern interpretations have to their storied ancestors. In appearance, dress, actions, and habits the giants of Dungeons and Dragons (in particular the Hill Giants) adhere to classic ideals surrounding the giants, penned in such texts as The Travels of Sir John Mandeville.

               The most obvious connection to be established is the massive size of the giants being portrayed. This continual focus on the stature of the creature could be seen as the continual appearance of excess in society. With the remainder of such a trait/concept in society, it is unsurprising that the giants of legend as well as their actual forms would remain significant in modern media. This is especially true based on the continual depiction of the giants as having distinctly human features, compared to the other more “bestial” creatures throughout the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual.

               A smaller and more easily overlooked similarity is the creatures preference of extreme environments. Throughout The Travels of Sir John Mandeville the importance of climate and surroundings is continually stressed; the more severe the area the more monstrous its inhabitants. The same is explicitly stated in the Dungeons and Dragons Monster Manual in regard to the giant race: “Giants and titans tend to lair in extreme environments, including scrublands, mountain peaks, volcanic calderas, and searing deserts.” While the in-game purposes of this can be summarized as simply the establishment of character/location, the actual lore reasoning is a bit less clear. While their connection to the natural world is noted in the Dungeons and Dragons universe, this living preference could be linked to the giants’ continual representation of excess, with their extreme size and being only truly fitting in in an equally extreme environment.

               Also to consider is Dungeons and Dragon’s description of the giants as a wicked, malicious race. With D&D essentially being a world of infinite possibility and change, it comes as something of a surprise that the giants are virtually never depicted in a heroic, or even neutral role. The argument could be raised that this is due to constraints of the games format itself, with the size difference between a giant and almost any other race an adventurer can assume being too great to make it a feasible option. However, this argument loses credibility in when considered alongside the novels written regarding the Dungeons and Dragons world. Even in these, where portraying a giant as a hero would come (one would think) as little issue, the massive humanoids are always cast as the aggressor/villain. Such adherence to the medieval depictions of giants as monstrous kidnappers and annihilators could potentially be a sign of man’s continual uneasiness towards this particular race of monsters, the massive creatures twisted mirroring of human traits and ideals too much to overlook. 

Gentle Giants

We've all seen it a thousand times: a movie introduces a hulking, menacing figure, seven, eight, ten, fifty feet tall. Impossibly strong, and usually intimidating: bearded, armored, muscled to the point of ludicrousness. Movies first take care to pan up slowly, or silhouette this character:

so that the regular characters can gasp and tremble at the sheer size of the beast, and  turn to run or gather their weapons to fight. However, surprise surprise!

 They're actually sweethearts. Usually, the gentle giant is the heart of whatever ragtag crew they adopt. Sweet and loving and sometimes not terribly smart, they usually have a childlike sense of wonder and faith and are loyal to the death to their friends. They also often have a connection to nature and a deep desire for peace. The trope is so prevalent that it's surprising when a contemporary character played as a looming, menacing thug doesn't turn out to be a sweet little kid on the inside. 

This is a reversal of a common-sense social judgment (hey, that guy looks like my nightmares, better keep away just to be safe) that first seems to have occurred with Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The monster in Frankenstein proves himself to be capable of reason and mercy, and takes care of things that are weaker than him, in contrast to Dr. Frankenstein himself, who becomes more monstrous and maddened by fear as the story goes on. This reversal (Hey! This guy looks bad, but get this, he's actually good!) must have at one point been a refreshing concept. Now, it's a trope of its own.
However, before Shelley's time, the usual perception of a giant was as a brutal, filthy, stupid creature. While that trope itself is still in use:

it apparently had its heyday throughout Western history. The giant was portrayed as a monstrous creature that lived far from civilization and often engaged in wild cruelty and sexual depravity. The giant was the antithesis of civilization: the savage holdouts in the forests and mountains who went against the encroaching sophisticated Roman culture, choosing instead to rely on the natural world instead of engaging with what was rapidly becoming 'Christendom.'

But how did we get from here:

to here? 

Certain elements of the medieval perception of giants might point to a link.Giants were portrayed as brutal creatures, true, but there were also elements of the fantastic to them. Their loves and appetites were outsize, matching their bodies. People with giant's blood often loved greatly, sacrificing themselves for their friends. In addition, the giant often seemed to have a spiritual connection with nature that spoke to a purity of spirit, which the 'civilized' man had traded for roads and books and laws. There might actually be a historical basis for this perception the mention of 'giants' might actually refer to the presence of Celt natives, who would have held on to a nature-based culture and seemed like savages to the Roman settlers. Gentle Giants in contemporary culture also sometimes retain this natural connection:

 playing into tropes that have lasted hundreds of years. This archetype of the big, lovable, sensitive, nature-and-peace-oriented giant who uses his brawn to protect and not to hurt may be a character that has morphed along with Western culture for centuries, transforming as we define and redefine our own culture, to accordingly become benign counterculture figures. Since the Industrial Revolution, our own estrangement from nature and from a gentle, simple mindset may have shaped our perception of the giant 'other' into a trusting, sweet, and loyal denizen of the natural world. In medieval times, nature was much more of a threat to civilization, and the veneer of a sophisticated European culture was dangerously thin, so giants may have been represented as much more threatening, wild, and transgressive, as a warning against becoming a wild, nature-reliant 'other,' which would have been a much more realistic possibility at that time than it is now.