Abstract
This thesis tackles an interdisciplinary research that includes both semantics and literature studies in an investigation of the use of emotive terms by the Norwegian author Henrik Ibsen through all of his career. With the support of James A. Russel’s valence-arousal model as well as Anna Wierzbicka an Cliff Goddard’ Natural Semantic Metalanguage, a lexical semantic study is composed to reach a deeper understanding of Ibsen’s emotion words, in particular Glad, Rolig, Ræd and Træt, Dæmpet, Vred. After the core meanings of these emotions are illustrated, the contexts and the relations to Ibsen’s characters are examined in a literary perspective, also thanks to Alex Houen’s Affect and Literature. This perusal includes how and why certain emotions are used, closing the cycle started with the semantic analysis. Evidence shows that in the last period of his career Ibsen implemented a wide emotional range, which included both the psychological insight developed in the second period as well as the emotional variety of the first period.