Emotions of DISGUST and UNPLEASANT PERSONAL EXPERIENCE as Aesthetic Responses in the Old English Poetic Corpus
Abstract
This paper analyses the lexical domains of DISGUST and UNPLEASANT PERSONAL EXPERIENCE and their associated emotional responses in Old English poetry. Combining methods from corpus-based lexical semantics and cognitive linguistics, this paper delves into the role of proximity senses in negative aesthetic experience in this particular literary context, looking into the phenomenology of these aesthetic emotions.
This research proves that these aesthetic emotions, despite their apparent sensory dimension, almost always index cognitive evaluations that are, in most of the cases, religiously oriented towards the preservation of social order. Furthermore, this paper also indicates that aesthetic emotion of DISGUST, particularly its dimension of "moral taint", is the most prevalent and effective negative aesthetic emotion in Old English poetry.