Archivi delle emozioni

Editorial

2025-07-31T18:30:08+00:00

While it is widely accepted that emotions are connected with the body, the precise nature of this connection remains difficult to pin down. Recent theories from different fields suggests a somewhat flexible interplay between bodily states and emotion categories, in which social or cultural contexts play an important role. Such generalising theories are helpful to understand the nature of emotion, but it remains important complement them with case studies from other fields, one of them being literature. The contributions to this volume exemplify different forms and aspects of the interplay between emotions and the body, e.g. involuntary bodily reactions vs. consciously controlled expressions of emotion, or subjective vs. intersubjective experiences – but also the difficulty or impossibility of sorting embodied emotions into neat categories.

Melting as a Metaphor of Embodied Emotions in Homer and Euripides

2025-07-31T18:30:41+00:00

Metaphors of melting (τήκειν) applied to human beings or parts of their bodies have a long and complex history in ancient Greek literature. This paper focuses on Homer and Euripides and examines how metaphors of melting are or can be used to describe embodied emotions, thus forming ‘primary’ or ‘correlational’ metaphors in the sense of Conceptual Metaphor Theory. In Homer, the most common target of melting metaphors is weeping, but we also find cases where the association with bodily experience remains more open. Euripides sometimes constructs more daring melting metaphors, especially cases referring to abstracta or the relatively new concept of the soul. Even in these cases, however, the context mostly suggests an association with embodied emotions; when the tragedies were performed, this bodily dimension of the emotions was probably even visible on stage. Overall, while Homer’s and Euripides’ melting metaphors differ due to literary factors and evolving anthropological concepts, they share a strong interest in emotion as bodily experience.

Andromache’s Swoon: the Fainting Female in Homer and Plutarch

2025-07-31T18:25:51+00:00

Graeco-Roman fainting is a generally understudied subject. Homeric syncopes appear in an overview by Alfons Nehring 1947, who notes that the percentage of male fainting incidents is considerable, whereas female episodes are less common. Although Homeric fainting is not strictly gendered, it typically functions as a commentary on a character’s weakened vulnerability when the character in question is either elderly or female. This article examines one crucial episode of female fainting through the character of Andromache in Iliad 22 and explores her subsequent influence in Plutarch’s Parallel Lives. Plutarch develops this paradigm in the Lives of Pompey and Brutus, as the works feature lively moments of feminine lament, fear, and collapse. Plutarch’s anecdotes of the swoons from the Late Republican Julia, Cornelia, and Porcia are prime instances of embodied emotion that can be traced back to Andromache’s swoon. Ultimately, the transformation of the Andromache paradigm perceived in Plutarch illustrates how this literary tradition of the gendered swoon has evolved gradually.

Le corps comme point de départ de la psychologie : la description de la folie amoureuse dans le Phèdre de Platon (250e1-252a1)

2025-07-31T18:31:12+00:00

In un passo molto famoso, Platone fornisce una descrizione poetica del sentimento amoroso, paragonandolo alla crescita di ali e piume in tutta l’anima. In questo articolo, vorrei mostrare come tale descrizione possa essere letta in chiave psicologica, nel senso che essa rappresenta in realtà il comportamento delle tre facoltà: il θυμός, la ἐπιθυμία e il λόγος. Le occorrenze di ciascun termine rilevante nella descrizione della crescita delle ali mostrano che tutti hanno un significato psicologico nel Fedro o in altri dialoghi. Questa interpretazione dimostra che Fedro 250e1–252a1 non è soltanto una descrizione poetica dell’amore, ma anche una riflessione sull’anima e sulle sue interazioni con il corpo. La follia descritta da Platone riguarda soltanto il λόγος, mentre il θυμός tenta di controllare la ἐπιθυμία, che viene rafforzata dalla vista del giovane bello. Ciò dimostra che il θυμός è molto più attivo di quanto non suggerisca la descrizione del cavallo bianco, il che è coerente con la psicologia del Timeo.

Parlare e tacere con gli occhi: le emozioni attraverso lo sguardo nelle Argonautiche di Apollonio Rodio

2025-07-31T18:26:55+00:00

A distinctive feature of Argonautica’s narrative is the vivid depiction of emotions and feelings. Indeed, Apollonius Rhodius reports psychological processes with great objectivity, explaining and precisely narrating their physical embodiment. In this paper, I explore Apollonius’ concept of the body’s resonance with emotion, with particular attention to how this is expressed through the gaze. The analysis delves into the significance of “looking downward” and “looking from below”. The first part of this study presents an overview of references to the gaze in the poem, followed by an analysis of two specific verbal creations (κατηφιάω and ὑπόφραζομαι) which allow for a deeper exploration of the semantic and literary meaning of the act of looking downward and from below.

Love and Love-making in Lucretius’ De rerum natura

2025-07-31T18:31:38+00:00

Lucretius famously concludes the fourth book of De rerum natura with an account of love; reading that finale as the analysis of an emotion, rather than a diatribe against it, shows that what Lucretius offers is not a cure for love, but a path to experiencing amor in a way that is both Roman and Epicurean. To that end, challenging the traditional interpretation of DRN 4, 1263-77 – namely, that wives have no need to please their husbands sexually and take little or no pleasure in sex themselves, this study argues that according to Lucretius there can and should be mutuality and reciprocity in love and its pleasures. Male or female, human or (other) animal, the position adopted by a mating pair during sexual intercourse reflects and embodies their emotions, and thus illuminates the complex neurophysiological processes and ethical choices behind them. Love, sex and marriage can coexist; when that happens, love and the pleasures of love-making are mutual, natural and necessary and ‘doggie style’ is the natural choice for coupling – or so Lucretius teaches.

When Poetry becomes Emotion: Embodying Compunction in selected Katanyktic Poems from the Middle and Late Byzantine Period

2025-07-31T18:32:39+00:00

Il presente articolo analizza gli effetti somatici della κατάνυξις (“compunzione”), un’emozione di spicco nella tradizione penitenziale bizantina, così come emerge nella poesia catanittica del medio e tardo periodo bizantino. Questi testi offrono una prospettiva singolare per studiare le concezioni bizantine dell’interiorità. Dopo una rassegna introduttiva della poesia catanittica e delle sue peculiarità, lo studio approfondisce il concetto di compunzione e la sua importanza nel contesto culturale e religioso bizantino. Viene poi specificato il corpus di testi scelti per l’indagine. Infine, l’articolo esamina le manifestazioni corporee della κατάνυξις nei penitenti, con particolare attenzione alle mortificazioni fisiche utilizzate come espressione di un pentimento profondo. L’analisi dimostra come le Sacre Scritture abbiano costituito la fonte principale di modelli per la condotta penitenziale e abbiano offerto un immaginario potente per raffigurare la compunzione.