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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... Invocations 88 The Performativity of Divine Speech 99 Divine Creation and Verbal Performance 104 Naming and Subjectivity 110 5 The Circumference of Vision : Songs of Innocence and of Experience 119 Perspectives on Blake's Vision 119 ...
... invocations and the account of creation in Paradise Lost, a model which is more limiting and hierarchizing, thus more political, than Milton may intend. The remaining chapters are devoted to Blake and concentrate on the paradigm of ...
... invocations and the account of creation in Paradise Lost , a model which is more limiting and hierarchizing , thus more political , than Milton may intend . The remaining chapters are devoted to Blake and concentrate on the paradigm of ...
... invocation and pro- phetic speech that have been used by other poets in the tradition . The poet's authority , even his or her subjectivity , is as much a function of the utterance as a guarantor of it . These two approaches to the ...
... invocation to tractate literature - which are favoured by poets like Milton and Blake . Benveniste's claim is that the possibility of positing a subject Performative Language and Visionary Poetry 31 Authority and Subjectivity ...
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 |
Other editions - View all
Creating States: Studies in the Performative Language of John Milton and ... Angela Esterhammer No preview available - 1994 |