“Discord melted away:” Metaphors of emotions in Swahili literary texts.

Metaphors are pervasive in both our everyday speech and literary language. They are particularly effective for codifying complex emotional experiences. In a literary context, the question arises of what makes literary metaphorical expressions different from the ones used in everyday speech. In Swahili literature, which is extremely rich in images of emotions, we can distinguish between conventionalized metaphors (e.g., “kujua kwa moyo” ‘to know by heart’) and less conventionalized/literary metaphors (e.g., “kuwasha moto moyoni” ‘to light a fire in the heart’). This paper analyzes the description of emotions, with a particular focus on metaphors of love and anger, in extracts from the novels Kiu [Thirst], by the Zanzibarian author Mohamed Suleiman (1972), and Dar es Salaam Usiku [Dar es Salaam by Night] by the Tanzanian author Ben Mtobwa (1989). Additional examples from a Swahili literary corpus established at L’Orientale University of Naples (NaSwaLi), mainly composed of contemporary prose, will also be taken into account.