Professor Nigel Harris of the University of Birmingham will be delivering a lecture on this most fascinating topic. Literary panthers come in all shapes, sizes and colours. Many of them have been investigated by scholarship, but not in a systematic way that might enable us precisely to trace developments in the understanding of the animal over the centuries. 

This lecture will seek to begin that process by proposing a series of categories into which various types of literary panther might be placed: the ‘real’ panther (including some examples of species confusion with the leopard and lion, and Rilke’s ‘Dinggedicht’); the allegorical panther (the Physiologus and its derivatives); the emblematic panther (the Etymachia and later text/image combinations); the talking panther (for example Nicole de Margival and The Jungle Book); and the dead panther (in particular, literary and cultural uses of panther skins). 

It is hoped that the provision of such a framework will encourage the development of a workable paradigm for the comparative literary evaluation of panthers, and perhaps of other animals.