Browsing by Author "Aguirre, Manuel"
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Item ‘A dismal howling’: Formulaic density and the Gothic tableau(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2021) Aguirre, ManuelScant attention has been paid by critics to the formulaic diction that pervades the Gothic genre. This article continues an extended experiment aiming to analyse formulaicity in one of the less-known Gothic novels. Peter Teuthold’s 1794 The Necromancer exhibits massive co-occurrence: textual units (lexemes, sounds, and both phrase and clause formations) regularly gravitate around other textual units, effectively clustering into fields. A field is defined as an open paradigm of items related by functional equivalence; the novel handles its components not as independent units but only in accordance with a ‘fielding’ principle, that is, only as paradigmatic elements which can be exchanged for or combined with other elements. Previous work has established a distinction between the formula properly so called and the formulaic pattern, defined as a construct that attracts lexical, phonological, syntactic, and connotative fields into its orbit. The article argues that ‘fielding’ operates on at least one ‘higher’ level, the level where formulaic patterns combine to shape a charged moment in the narrative – a tableau. After selecting a fragment of text and illustrating the structure of a single formulaic pattern, the article isolates each phrase or clause segment in the fragment, outlines the pattern it belongs in, and shows that over seventy-five per cent of its textual matter is demonstrably formulaic. Analysis of several other excerpts suggests that formulaic density is not homogeneous but decreases or rises at different points in the novel. A rationale for high-density segments is then sought in the ritualising nature of the tableau itself.Item Phasing "Beowulf ": An aspect of narrative structure in fairytale and epic(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2002) Aguirre, ManuelItem "Thrilled with chilly horror": A formulaic pattern in Gothic fiction(Adam Mickiewicz University, 2014) Aguirre, ManuelThis article is part of a body of research into the conventions which govern the composition of Gothic texts. Gothic fiction resorts to formulas or formula-like constructions, but whereas in writers such as Ann Radcliffe this practice is apt to be masked by stylistic devices, it enjoys a more naked display in the – in our modern eyes – less ‘canonical’ Gothics, and it is in these that we may profitably begin an analysis. The novel selected was Peter Teuthold’s The Necromancer (1794) – a very free translation of K. F. Kahlert’s Der Geisterbanner (1792) and one of the seven Gothic novels mentioned in Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey. There is currently no literature on the topic of formulaic language in Gothic prose fiction. The article resorts to a modified understanding of the term ‘collocation’ as used in lexicography and corpus linguistics to identify the significant co-occurrence of two or more words in proximity. It also draws on insights from the Theory of Oral-Formulaic Composition, in particular as concerns the use of the term ‘formula’ in traditional epic poetry, though again some modifications are required by the nature of Teuthold’s text. The article differentiates between formula as a set of words which appear in invariant or near-invariant collocation more than once, and a formulaic pattern, a rather more complex, open system of collocations involving lexical and other fields. The article isolates a formulaic pattern—that gravitating around the node-word ‘horror’, a key word for the entire Gothic genre –, defines its component elements and structure within the book, and analyses its thematic importance. Key to this analysis are the concepts of overpatterning, ritualization, equivalence and visibility.