Di minacce non temere, di promesse non godereLa minaccia in proverbi italiani e spagnoli del XVII sec.

Resumo

The word threat describes an ancient praxis. It can be expressed by silences, words, gestures. Threat is a subject difficult to be defined and it can be explored variously by different disciplines. This paper aims to study the representation of threat in a corpus of Italian and Spanish proverbs derived from 17th Century collections of proverbs. How has threat been represented in proverbs? What are the main characteristics of a threat, the recurring features that tradition maintains and transmits? Does a topical image of threat depicted by proverbs exist? First, the objective of the paper and the criteria applied to select the corpus are provided (§ 2). Then, a semantic analysis of proverbs concerning threats is presented, followed by a focus on recurring features (§3). Finally, some conclusions about invariants in the representation of threat are presented and discussed (§ 4).