This page gathers publications, conference presentations, workshops, and project-related outputs connected with Thinking of Thinking: Conceptual Metaphors of Cognition in the Plutarchan Corpus. It brings together public records of the team’s work on Plutarch, conceptual metaphor, semantic annotation, and the developing Observatory.
Publications and project papers
Journal articleThe Jewels of the MindLaurens van der Wiel, The Jewels of the Mind: Plutarch as a Teacher in Coniugalia praecepta 145A-146A, Classical Philology 121 (2026), 256-270.+
The article reads Plutarch’s Coniugalia praecepta as a work of moral and literary education. It shows how brief likenesses, comparisons, and metaphorical images help Plutarch present philosophical instruction as something memorable, teachable, and socially embedded.
BookAn Opaque Mirror for TrajanLaurens van der Wiel, An Opaque Mirror for Trajan: A Literary Analysis and Interpretation of Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2024.+
This monograph offers a full literary interpretation of Plutarch’s Regum et imperatorum apophthegmata. It is relevant to the Observatory because it examines Plutarch’s use of exempla, education, imperial address, and moral instruction in early imperial prose.
Project paperTheoretical and technical challengesKatarzyna Kuś, Bartosz Maćkiewicz, Orestis Karatzoglou, Laurens van der Wiel, Angelina Gerus, and Julia Doroszewska, Theoretical and technical challenges of developing Plutarchean Corpus of Conceptual Metaphor of Mind.+
This project paper explains why a corpus of cognition metaphors in Plutarch requires both theoretical caution and technical structure. It introduces the problem of scaling metaphor analysis in Classics while keeping annotation auditable and tied to Greek passages.
Background articleWindows of CuriosityJulia Doroszewska, Windows of Curiosity: Eyes and Vision in Plutarch’s De curiositate (Mor. 515-523), Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 59.1 (2019), 158-178.+
The article studies visual imagery in Plutarch’s De curiositate. It is an important background study for the Observatory because it shows how a single Plutarchan text can organize moral psychology through dense and layered metaphorical language.
ForthcomingTaming PassionOrestis Karatzoglou, Taming Passion: Plutarch’s Dialectical Use of Metaphors in De virtute morali, Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies, forthcoming 2026.+
The forthcoming article examines how Plutarch uses metaphors in De virtute morali to think through passion, reason, and ethical formation. Final bibliographic details will be added when public metadata is complete.
Conference presentations
2024
21st International Congress of Linguists: ICL 2024 Poznań
Poznań, 8-14 September 2024. The accepted-papers list places the project contribution in the focus stream Current Perspectives on Historical Metaphor.
- Angelina Gerus, Can a Metaphor Change the Concept? Animal Metaphors Shaping Polypragmosyne in Plutarch’s On Curiosity.
- Katarzyna Kuś, Bartosz Maćkiewicz, Orestis Karatzoglou, Laurens van der Wiel, Angelina Gerus, and Julia Doroszewska, Theoretical and technical challenges of developing Plutarchean Corpus of Conceptual Metaphor of Mind.
2025
13th International Plutarch Society Congress: Plutarch and the Natural World
University of Groningen, 11-13 June 2025. The programme includes four project-related talks on natural, medical, and animal imagery in Plutarch’s metaphors of cognition.
- Julia Doroszewska, Natural Imagery in the Metaphors of Cognition in the Plutarchan Corpus.
- Laurens van der Wiel, Plutarch’s Tapeworm: Medical Imagery in De cupiditate divitiarum.
- Angelina Gerus, A Beehive or a Trojan Horse? Plutarch’s Ethical Views and Critiques in Animal Metaphors of the Moralia.
- Orestis Karatzoglou, Not Simply a Metaphor? Plutarch’s Domestication Imagery and the Self-Domestication Theory.
2026
2nd Semantic Annotation for the Ancient World (SA4AW 2026)
Rethymno, Crete, 7-8 May 2026. The book of abstracts records two project contributions on annotation methodology, interpretive labour, and hybrid AI workflows.
- Angelina Gerus and Katarzyna Kuś, Coding Narrative Dynamics in Plutarch’s Metaphors.
- Julia Doroszewska, Orestis Karatzoglou, and Bartosz Maćkiewicz, Coding the Uncodable? Manual Semantic Annotation of Cognition Metaphors in Plutarch Between Interpretive Labor and Hybrid AI Workflows.
Workshops and project events
Project workshop
Conceptual Metaphors as Tools in Cognitive History: Benefits and Challenges
Faculty of History, University of Warsaw, Room 4, 16-17 May 2025. The workshop brought together cognitive linguistics, Classics, ancient philosophy, semantic resources, textual criticism, and corpus annotation in order to test how conceptual metaphor analysis can be used as a tool for cognitive history.
The first day moved from broader methodological questions to the project corpus: Joanna Jurewicz and Cristóbal Pagán Cánovas opened the discussion on cognitive linguistics and diachronic cognition, followed by Julia Doroszewska’s overview of the project and Katarzyna Kuś and Bartosz Maćkiewicz’s quantitative overview of metaphors in Plutarch’s works. Later sessions connected metaphor research with ancient WordNets and the Ancient Greek temperature lexicon.
The second day focused on literary interpretation, textual criticism, and difficult cases in Plutarch. Laurens van der Wiel discussed text-critical issues in identifying metaphors, while Angelina Gerus and Orestis Karatzoglou addressed elaborated, narrative, and underdeveloped metaphors from the perspective of interpretation and coding.
Data releases
Current status
Corpus access under discussion
The public Observatory is available online. Policies for downloadable snapshots, citation-ready exports, and reuse workflows are still being discussed by the team.
Reuse
Research inquiries
Researchers interested in reuse, teaching materials, or export formats can contact the project team while the release policy is being finalized.
Teaching and reuse
In preparation
Teaching materials
Curated passages, visualizations, and teaching packets will be added once the project team decides which materials should be public and how they should be cited.
Citation
How to cite the Observatory
A formal citation format for the corpus and interface should be added alongside the first agreed data release or public documentation package.
Conference and workshop items are based on public programmes, books of abstracts, and project materials. Data-release information remains intentionally cautious until the team confirms citation and reuse policy.