Studies in Cognitive Classical Semantics

The eight papers that comprise this volume address questions relative to classical languages from the perspective of cognitive semantics and have all been inspired by the application of embodiment theory, conceptual metaphor theory and cognitive narratology to ancient texts. The various chapters explore the metaphorical workings of cognition as reflected in Latin and Ancient Greek, focusing on embodied imaginative mechanisms and image schemas; they seek to show some interesting effects in the semantic systems of these languages, covering prepositions, verbs, emotion words, collocations, phraseologies and etymology. The data discussed provide further evidence for the twin assumptions that the human body constitutes a fundamental interpretive template for understanding and expressing reality in both ancient and modern languages, and that metaphor is a key organizing principle of conceptual and linguistic structure, one that operates with wideranging effects and at multiple levels of analysis.