Loki’s chains, Agni’s yoke, Prometheus Bound, and the Old English Boethius. Indo-European myths of the “Binding/Yoking of Fire-Gods” in the light of Comparative Poetics and Cognitive Linguistics

This study has a twofold aim. The first is to make the case for the reconstruction of an Indo-European myth of the “Fire-God’s Binding” with wellpreserved reflexes in Old Norse and Sanskrit texts, but also partial reflexes in Ancient Greek and Old English texts. The second, methodological aim is to advocate for Cognitive Oral Poetics and Cognitive Linguistics in general as an ideal framework for the synchronic analysis of the linguistic material currently studied in comparative and diachronic perspective within the field of Comparative IE Poetics. After a methodological introduction explaining the theoretical framework, and in particular the notions of “thematic frame” (combining those of “theme” in Comparative IE Poetics and of “frame” in Cognitive Linguistics) and of “phraseological construction” (combining those of “phraseological collocation” in Comparative IE poetics and of “construction” in Cognitive Linguistics), a set of five such items is identified in the texts of both the Norse myth of “Loki’s Binding” and the Indic myth of “Agni’s Yoking”, allowing for the reconstruction of an IE myth of the “Fire-God’s Binding/Yoking”, with partial correspondences in the Ancient Greek tradition of “Prometheus’s Binding/Yoking” and in various Old English texts structured by a peculiar poetics of “Fire’s Binding”.