Metafore e generi letterari: uno studio corpus-based sui testi della latinità

[Machine translation] The contribution investigates the relationship between conceptual metaphor and literary genre. The research is based on the large amount of data collected as part of the project The Lexicon of Embodied Experience in Latin, aimed at investigating the metaphorical expression of emotions in Latin literary texts. Adopting a corpus-based approach, this study analyzes the frequency of metaphors used for the expression of emotions attested in Latin texts (included in the Antiquitas section of the Bibliotheca Teubneriana Latina) and their distribution within the main literary genres (e.g. theater, lyric and epigram, satire, narrative poetry, historiography, oratory, epistolography, scientific treatises). The investigation shows, also through the application of statistical tests, that some metaphors, such as those found in the EMOTION IS AN OPPONENT scheme, do not seem to be distributed significantly differently in prose or poetry texts; for others, however, a strong specificity emerges with respect to the literary genre, as happens in the case of the metaphor EMOTION IS AN ANIMAL. The analysis shows that this difference should not be explained by assuming that the metaphorical patterns most widely attested in the different genres are the most conventional, while the rarest metaphors and/or attested only to a specific author or genre are those of a more creative nature; rather, considering the function performed by metaphors on the narrative level. The results discussed therefore corroborate the idea that metaphor is an element of central importance at the textual and discursive level and that it plays a leading role in the definition of literary genres.