The Semiotic Representations of Fear in Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows"
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DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.13147040Keywords:
Semiotics, Algernon Blackwood, horror, WillowsAbstract
Fear, one of the most basic emotions of humanity, is a combination of anxiety and mystery towards the unknown, which cannot be understood or explained. The elements of fear, which combine with the human instinct to survive and form one of the most basic vital feelings, have formed the basis of countless stories and legends in human history. On the other hand, literature has become a tool that feeds on universal fears and embodies, presents, or reproduces the manifestations of fear through different worlds and emotional experiences. In this context, literary works are more than just a transfer, an object of entertainment, or an ordinary work, they also contain reflections of many phenomena that exist in the basic thought, emotion, and cognitive systems of humanity with the symbols, references, and indicators they contain. In addition to the text producer's own personal creation process, traces, reflections and even disclosure of the knowledge existing in the cultural memory can also be revealed through the interpretation of these indicators. Based on Algernon Blackwood's work "The Willows", this study aims to analyze with what kind of references the image of fear is represented on the linguistic plane and what kind of linguistic semiosphere is created to create the feeling of fear in the reader. In this regard, the study first focuses on the meaning production of signs then analyzes the linguistic structures detected in the text and presents how the language portrays the image of fear explicitly or implicitly.
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