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 32
... existence of an accepted procedure for the per- formance of the speech act ) , then in terms of internal grammatical criteria 4 Stanley Fish makes this distinction at the end of ' With the Compliments of the Author ' ( 720-1 ) ; see ...
... existence is determined , not by historical reality , but by some other set of criteria . As I will argue in the fol- lowing chapter , the recurrent paradigm for the phenomenological perfor- mative , in speech - act theory and in ...
... existence in the first place . Petrey's essays on Balzac ( ' Castration , Speech Acts , and the Realist Difference , ' ' The Reality of Representation ' ) are an important example of the critical approach I define in this chapter as the ...
... existence in language and in the physical world . What Roland Barthes has said of mod- ernist writing could be said of poetry in general : its mode of existence is analogous to that evoked by the middle voice in Greek grammar , in that ...
... existence a unique way of seeing but not a visual or actual object which one might speak of owning or exchanging . If I imagine a room , Wittgenstein suggests , I may ' have ' a ' visual room , ' but the word ' have ' can only be ...
Contents
10 | |
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 |
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Creating States: Studies in the Performative Language of John Milton and ... Angela Esterhammer No preview available - 1994 |