The wolf and the lion in Russian and Swedish poetry-propaganda of the 17th – early 18th century

Abstract

The article considers European (primarily Russian and Swedish) poetic victory panegyrics of the 17th – early 18th centuries, whose authors present a recently occurred battle as a fight of wild beasts. A special group of military panegyrics consists of works containing a narrative about the confrontation (the Swedish “triumphal song” of 1677) or alliance (the Russian poems of the Poltava cycle) of the lion and the wolf. That animal pair is found in the works of ancient and modern authors, and among the possible reasons for its appearance in Russian and Swedish victory panegyrics one can mention the consonance of the names of both animals (lupus “derives from leopus”, “lion’s paw”), noted by Isidore of Seville and undoubtedly known to European poets. It is assumed that, for the panegyrists, the wolf, possessing only a single lion’s trait, is seen as a “diminished”, “lesser”, and necessarily defeated lion.