Saevit infelix amor: aspetti lessicali e immagini metaforiche della gelosia nella Medea di Seneca

This contribution aims to deepen the discussionon jealousy in the Roman world with a focus on Seneca's Medea,one of the most significant text to observe the phenomenology of this emotion in Latin literature.This study takes its cue from a preliminary and surprising observation, namely the absence ofabstract terms semantically related to the notion of jealousyin the whole tragedy. Starting from this insight, this studyinvestigates not only the emotional terminology in a lexical perspective, but especially the “metaphorical images”, in a semantic-cognitive perspective, used in the expression and representation of an emotional scenario that we could describe as scenario of jealousy.Specifically, these metaphorical images are analysed from a twofold viewpoint: firstly, with respect to their pivotal function in structuring the main narrative themes of the tragedy; secondly, incomparison with the metaphors used to express linguistically the notion of (erotic, but mostlypolitical-social)jealousyin other texts of Latin literature.Accordingly, the main aim of this work is to provide new insights on the central role of metaphorical images both in the representation of Senecan theory of emotions and in a broader and shared expression of the phenomenology of jealousy