THE IMAGE OF A LION IN THE NINE VOLUMES OF FABLES BY I. A. KRYLOV

Abstract

This article presents, for the first time, the meaning of the metaplot in the books of fables by I. A. Krylov. The metaplot of a lion is canonical for the fable genre and represents an invariant model of power in the fictional world. The purpose of this article is to identify and describe the metaplot as one of the significant factors of Krylov’s literary strategy, as he created the nine volumes of fables during a dynamic literary process and change in the dominant trends in the national verbal culture of the first half of the 19th century. The idea of the fabulist regarding the lion’s metaplot is revealed in the horizontal sphere of the world, the prevalence of negative tendencies and the tragic, but natural ending of the character in the eighth and ninth books. The authors of this article consider the infernal space in the metaplot of a lion as a structural part of a moralistic message, dialogically addressed to the character; they fix the correlation between the plot punishment and the emergence of the space of hell in the nine-book. Reconstruction of the character's individual hell, taking into account his passions, shows that Krylov’s use of infernal space is not accidental, which in the future will give researchers ample opportunities for analyzing the space of his entire meta-concept. This article focuses on the chronological points of actualization of the metaplot in the work of the fabulist, in particular, in 1818-1819, as well as his transferability of the texts within the framework of the nine books, which is obviously connected with his special vision of the intertextual integrity of the project.