‘The tranquillity of the mansion:’ Fields and formulaic diction in a gothic novel

Abstract

No study of formulaic language in Gothic fiction is currently available. This article explores the structure of Gothic formulaic discourse in one of the ‘Northanger novels,’ The Necromancer (1794). Using the corpus-linguistics concept of collocation, as well as insights from the oral-formulaic theory of composition, the article distinguishes formula from formulaic pattern and proposes a definition for the latter concept centred on the notion of ‘field.’ Whereas this novel has often been berated for its incoherence, subsequent analysis shows that formulaic language builds up complex fractal networks that belie this charge and also suggests that Gothic is best looked at as a liminal genre, halfway between literary and folk narrative.