The emotional dominant of fear in neo-gothic novel via opposition “familiar - alien” (on the material of neo-gothic novel I. Murdoch “The Unicorn”)

The article dwells on the emotional dominant of fear in the text of neo-gothic fiction. This text type is popular with the readership and viewed as a manifestation of the so- called “culture of fear” (F. Furedi). The author analyzes the emotional dominant of fear in terms of the universal opposition “familiar - alien” that reflects the principles of dialogism, relevant for modern science. This opposition is localized in mind and determines man’s emotional and aesthetic segmentation of the world in the process of its cognition. The universality of the opposition is seen in a treatment of its members: “familiar” - good; “alien” - bad. These members are usually associated with the category of space modeled in a text as a secondary modeling system (Y. M. Lotman). The author identifies the opposition by means of revealing opposite linguistic interdependences that are emotionally colored in a character’s mind according to a writer ’s intention. It helps to distinguish correlative links between the structure of the emotional dominant of fear and the cyclicity of a plot of neo-gothic texts. “The familiar space” arouses positive emotions in a character but approaching, being in and moving off “the alien space” arouse predominant emotions (e.g. solitude, worry, foreboding), the dominating emotion proper (fear) and postdominant emotions (e.g. joy, nostalgia, love) respectively. The proposed approach to the analysis of the emotional dominant of fear, that is a subject-matter of the article, lets one arrange a complex emotive semantics of the neo-gothic text, make necessary emotional stresses that represent the emotional dynamics of a character (quasisubject) and provide its systemic linguistic analysis.