The analysis of the different modalities through which the representation of pain is realised in the Anglo-Saxon elegies has revealed a marked tendency towards images and descriptions that manifest a particular emotional state by means of diverse processes of actualization. In these processes, lemmas concerning the lexis of pain are related to elements that are apparently unrelated to its semantics. Thus, in this enforced isolation faced by the elegiac entity, pain becomes the personification of a fellow soldier (to gesiþþe ond longaþ) or connotes the phases of the day (uhtceare), the seasons of the year (wintercearig), in which the solitary creature experiences his own suffering. In Anglo-Saxon poetry, the close link established between the emotional representation and the description of the surrounding landscape in which the emotional state is experienced takes on complex and particularly refined forms in the elegies. It has been therefore possible to identify solutions that show, on the one hand, the complex semantic layering of these elegies as the result of the complex cultural stratification of the society in which they are grounded. On the other hand, they offer an immediate emotional intelligibility since they have a gift for the universality of poetry.
To gesiþþe sorge ond longaþ, wintercearig, ûhtceare: la concreta fisicità del dolore nelle elegie anglosassoni
RIVIELLO, Carla
2012-01-01
Abstract
The analysis of the different modalities through which the representation of pain is realised in the Anglo-Saxon elegies has revealed a marked tendency towards images and descriptions that manifest a particular emotional state by means of diverse processes of actualization. In these processes, lemmas concerning the lexis of pain are related to elements that are apparently unrelated to its semantics. Thus, in this enforced isolation faced by the elegiac entity, pain becomes the personification of a fellow soldier (to gesiþþe ond longaþ) or connotes the phases of the day (uhtceare), the seasons of the year (wintercearig), in which the solitary creature experiences his own suffering. In Anglo-Saxon poetry, the close link established between the emotional representation and the description of the surrounding landscape in which the emotional state is experienced takes on complex and particularly refined forms in the elegies. It has been therefore possible to identify solutions that show, on the one hand, the complex semantic layering of these elegies as the result of the complex cultural stratification of the society in which they are grounded. On the other hand, they offer an immediate emotional intelligibility since they have a gift for the universality of poetry.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
