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
Results 1-5 of 39
... element in all these approaches is a focus on the context of the utterance . The attention to context , and thus to the uniqueness of the individual utterance , may be identified as one of the major qualifications that speech - act ...
... elements which render the context non - serious or non - standard . Far from an explanatory system , this view of performative utterances would end in a proclamation of the inde- terminacy of meaning , since ' meaning is context - bound ...
... element of illocutionary force , these critics defend drama and play - acting as one type of context that can offer especially valuable insights into the workings of performativity . The analysis of fiction , or what to do with ...
... elements of context that determine the performative force of an utterance at a particular place and time , where ' utterance ' may refer either to words spoken by characters within the text or to the text itself as illocutionary act ...
... element in lit- erature , since the imaginative lyric represents the kind of illocutionary act ' that we associate with the seer , the vates , the vessel , the sibyl , the kind of act attributed to someone inspired with unnatural powers ...
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 |