Florentina-Loredana Stanciu and Mariana Neagu, Universitatea „Dunărea de Jos” din Galați, Romania
published in the Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Love and Relationship Studies, 6-8 March, 2026
You can see the full video recording of this presentation at the YouTube channel of the International Institute of Love Studies
Introduction
This paper presents a comparative linguistic analysis of emotional landscape of love discourse within two notable epistolary corpora: the correspondence between Romanian National Poet Mihai Eminescu and Veronica Micle, and the letters exchanged between Franz Kafka and Milena Jesenská. Prior researchers investigated love metaphors in formal poetry and narrative prose (Lakoff & Turner, 1989; Semino, 1997)
However, researchers focused much less on the importance of epistolary love discourse. Letters occupy a unique position between unfiltered emotional expression and culturally influenced language, offering a distinct insight into the cognitive structure of affection.
This study employed Conceptual Metaphor Theory (CMT), cognitive semantics, and affective linguistics to analyze the literary construction of love, longing, and emotional dependence through metaphorical frameworks (Lakoff & Johnson, 1980; Kövecses, 1986; Wierzbicka, 1999)
The aim of this study was to explore how these love metaphors reveal the connection between the authors’ individual experiences and the wider culturally influenced meanings embedded in their cultural linguistic traditions.
Methodology and methods
In this study, I followed a qualitative, contrastive methodology, using metaphorical expressions as the primary units of analysis. Both epistolary corpora are examined in English translation to ensure methodological consistency and comparability.
The selection of these two corpora is motivated by their shared genre, emotional intensity, and historical proximity, as well as by the contrast between their linguistic and cultural frameworks, which enables a cross-cultural comparison of metaphorical conceptualizations of love and longing.
Metaphors are identified and analyzed in terms of their source and target domains, with particular attention to conceptualizations of desire, absence, temporality, vulnerability, and emotional dependence.
Highlights of results
The results of the study present the role of cognitive metaphors in communicating the affective experiences of love across both contexts, that of the Romanian Eminescu-Micle and the Central European Kafka-Jesenská collection of love letters.
Eminescu’s correspondence primarily communicates through nature-based metaphors to convey emotional attachment and yearning, wherein LOVE IS RENEWAL/SPRING(spring has come, it has arrived – though without flowers or greenery yet – and spring is, above all, the season of love) and the OBJECT OF LOVE IS BIRD/SWALLOW(My little darling, believe that I think of you every day and I miss you, and that – the moment I could, without shame, I would give you wings … so that you might come to me from above like a swallow arriving with spring; I would be calm only by locking in you in a birdcage). These metaphoric patterns refer to the Romanian cultural notion of dor, representing a multifaceted semantic domain that includes desire, longing, and relational distance.
On the other hand, Kafka’s letters communicate intense corporeal and violent imagery, conceptualizing LOVE AS A DESTROYING FORCE(you are the knife I turn inside myself, this is love; I am caught in a tide of sorrow and love) while highlighting existential anxiety and emotional instability.
Thus, Eminescu encourages a reconnection with nature and the beloved, whereas Kafka’s metaphors convey a sense of disintegration and the intrinsic peril of intimacy.
Discussion and conclusions
The comparative analysis demonstrates that while certain metaphorical patterns of love and longing are common across cultural contexts, they are also shaped by culturally specific concepts, linguistic framing, and individual subjectivity.
Specifically, in the Eminescu-Micle correspondence, love is portrayed through Romanian Romantic ideals, nature imagery, and lyrical expression, whereas in the Central European Kafka-Milena letters, love is depicted as destructive and obsessive through Modernist existentialism.
References
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