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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... 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 that signifiers have no determinate meaning but are ...
... limited range of meaning . Rather , the exploration of speech - act theory in this chapter will trace through its various manifestations a few focal points which the theorization of performative language shares with the language of ...
... ( Limited Inc 17 ) . Defen- sively , John Searle responds that Austin was not making a metaphysical exclusion but rather suggesting that non - serious speech acts were not the best choices to begin with when developing a theory of ...
... ( Limited Inc 19-20 ) . What is more , Derrida's meditation on the American Declaration of Independence reveals that the authorizing signature must be regarded as an event which at once depends on and brings into being the identity of the ...
... limited by a historical context and a conceptual frame of ref- erence . Elsewhere , Williams reveals that the poem began as an ordinary ( and presumably truthful ) note to his wife , and the context - dependence of performative language ...
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 |