Corpus Stylistic Analysis of Plague in Orhan Pamuk’s Nights of Plague and Daniel Defoe’s A Journal of the Plague Year

Drawing on corpus stylistics techniques, we analysed Nights of Plague and A Journal of the Plague Year by comparatively uncovering the keywords, clusters, and thematic signals by dint of Sketch Engine as an innovative corpus tool. Analysing each novel centering around “plague, political issues, fear, and panic in England and Minger Island”, the study attempted to explore how Defoe and Pamuk represent the plague through characters and events. Top-down and bottom-up approaches followed statistical and contextual patterns and associations based on the analysis of “perception of disease.” Log-likelihood and frequency contributed to the interpretation of the data. The main theme of “plague” affects both the characters and events and is explored in terms of the impact of disease, highlighting similarities and differences in commonly used lexical patterns. This analysis brings a recent global perspective to the concept of “plague” by examining its devastating effects.