Creating States: Studies in the Performative Language of John Milton and William BlakeAlthough the concept of the performative has influenced literary theory in numerous ways, this book represents one of the first full-length studies of performative language in literary texts. Creating States examines the visionary poetry of John Milton and William Blake, using a critical approach based on principles of speech-act theory as articulated by J.L. Austin, John Searle, and Emile Benveniste. Angela Esterhammer proposes a new way of understanding the relationship between these two poets, while at the same time evaluating the role of speech-act philosophy in the reading of visionary poetry and Romantic literature. Esterhammer distinguishes between the 'sociopolitical performative,' the speech act which is defined by a societal context and derives power from institutional authority, and the `phenomenological performative,' language which is invested with the power to posit or create because of the individual will and consciousness of the speaker. Analysing texts such as The Reason of Church-Government, Paradise Lost, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, and Jerusalem, Esterhammer traces the parallel evolution of Milton and Blake from writers of political and anti-prelatical tracts to poets who, having failed in their attempts to alter historical circumstances through a direct address to their contemporaries, reaffirm their faith in individual visionary consciousness and the creative word – while continuing to use the forms of a socially or politically performative language. |
From inside the book
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... criticism of the past three decades has attacked Logos as a limited concept , challenging the notion of a transcendent Word by demonstrating that words derive meaning only from their place in a differential structure of signifiers , or ...
... criticism , political science , and other fields have multiplied definitions and examples of when and how speech can be an act . In what follows , I attempt to develop a speech - act approach which addresses the distinctiveness of ...
... Criticism , edited by Charles W. Durham and Kristin P. McColgan ( Susquehanna UP , 1994 ) ; and part of chapter 4 as ' Creation , Subjectivity , and Linguistic Structure in Paradise Lost : Milton with Saussure and Benveniste ' in ...
... criticism . My colleagues have shown great tolerance in listening and responding to a number of work - in - progress excerpts from this project which I presented as internal papers , and I have also learned a great deal from audiences ...
... critics , is also a problem of context . This is Austin's famous , or infamous , exclusion of non - serious speech , and of utterances in plays or poems , from the province of speech - act theory : ... a performative utterance will ...
Contents
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16 | |
23 | |
31 | |
42 | |
48 | |
The J Myth | 54 |
3 | 65 |
5 | 119 |
Relations in the State of Innocence | 132 |
Relations in the State of Experience | 143 |
Naming in The Book of Urizen | 152 |
The Argument of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell | 158 |
A Song of Liberty | 167 |
Statements and States | 174 |
A Revision | 184 |
General and Special Inspiration | 70 |
Miltons Promise | 77 |
The Elision of the Performative | 85 |
The Performativity of Divine Speech | 99 |
Naming and Subjectivity | 110 |
A Division | 191 |
Creating States | 201 |
The Community of Phrases | 216 |
Index | 239 |
Other editions - View all
Creating States: Studies in the Performative Language of John Milton and ... Angela Esterhammer No preview available - 1994 |