Phenomenon of jealousy in Latin language and literature: metaphors, scenarios and embodied experiences

Abstract

This thesis explores the phenomenon of jealousy in Latin language and literature. Its principal aim is to gain further understanding as to how what we think of as ‘jealousy’ was expressed in Latin through more concrete and embodied experiences.

Building on embodied cognition theory applied to emotions, this thesis considers jealousy as a holistic process where mind, body, and cultural and natural environments are all entangled and integrated to make sense of a given phenomenon in a situated context. This entanglement is readily apparent in how often we describe and express abstract concepts, such as emotions, through more concrete and embodied ones, for example via metaphors. According to conceptual metaphor theory, metaphors disclose information about how human beings form and extend categories, especially abstract ones, from bodily experiences (Chapter 1).

In order to investigate the emotion of jealousy in Latin from this viewpoint, an integrated and multi-faceted methodology is required. To do so, I take into consideration a combined approach, which includes a corpus-based analysis focusing on some Latin lexemes related to jealousy, on the one hand, and a script-based analysis of key literary texts describing some relevant emotion scenarios, on the other. In both cases, I will look specifically at embodied semantics, and especially at embodied metaphors, through which this emotional phenomenon is expressed in different literary works (Chapter 2).

Moreover, both in my methodological choices and in the selection of the material to be investigated, I deal with the fact that Latin has no straightforward way of expressing what in English would be called ‘jealousy’. In this respect, the corpus-based analysis investigates lexemes which can express something close to this emotion in its broad sense, such as invidia, livor, malevolentia, obtrectatio, and aemulatio (Chapter 3). Through the script-based analysis, in turn, I delve into some exemplary literary texts describing something similar to ‘our’ episodes of jealousy, even in the absence of a lexical term which expresses it. Such texts display various representations of jealousy in different literary genres, including comedy (Chapter 4), elegiac poetry (Chapter 5), tragedy (Chapter 6), and satire (Chapter 7).

Ultimately, this thesis attempts to show to what extent a more general investigation of emotions in ancient cultures can benefit from an encounter with various research disciplines. Theories from cognitive studies, such as embodied cognition theory and conceptual metaphor theory, provide Classicists with new perspectives and methodologies for analysing emotional phenomena in the ancient world; conversely, research in the domain of ancient cultures, and evidence found in languages and texts from the past, can open up further stimulating challenges to contemporary debate around this cross-cultural experience we call emotion.