Metaphors and Emotions in Friðþjóf saga and in Friðþjófs rimur

This paper aims to analyze lexicon and rhetorical devices through which feelings and emotive states are conveyed in Friðþjófssaga’s verses, by pointing out the shift from the impassive (although not totally devoid of feelings) language of prose to the ornamented rhetoric of poetry. The formal elements used for voicing emotions which appear in the stanzas will also be compared with those used in Friðþjófsrímur, showing how rímur had inherited the emotionless mode of the saga prose for expressing feelings, reducing kennings and other rhetorical tropes – now deprived of their creative power and used only for meeting metric needs - to empty formulas.