The Rhetoric of Fear in English Literature of the 16th-17th Centuries (The Case of the Expression "Great Fear"): A Digital Approach

The article explores the usage of the expression "great fear" in texts of English literature from the 16th to 17th centuries. The analysis focuses on identifying the religious and secular contexts in which this phrase functioned, as well as understanding its meaning in early modern English culture. The research is based on materials from the Early English Books Online (EEBO) corpus, which includes thousands of English-language printed sources from the 16th and 17th centuries, such as sermons, theological treatises, historical chronicles, travelogues, pamphlets, and works of fiction. This genre diversity allows for tracking the range of meanings of the expression "great fear" in both religious and secular texts and uncovering patterns of its usage in the cultural and historical context of early modernity. To identify the peculiarities of the functioning of the expression "great fear," digital methods are employed, including a corpora approach and machine learning algorithms, allowing for the highlighting of key themes and narratives associated with this expression. The results of the study demonstrate that the expression "great fear" was used not only in religious texts but also in various secular genres. This indicates that the expression gained the status of a stable formula, applied to describe both individual and collective experiences of fear in a wide range of situations: from reactions to miracles or divine intervention to descriptions of fear concerning military threats or personal choices. Within this broad contextual range, "great fear" begins to function as a marker of a crisis state in which the sacred and the secular are intertwined. The analysis using digital methods revealed the most frequent biblical references associated with "great fear" and thematic clusters where the expression appears most often. The use of digital methods for analyzing early modern texts presents new opportunities for researching the dynamics of religious language and its connection to the socio-political context of the era.