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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... present at a specific time in the past ( 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 ...
... present ) . More importantly , for the purposes of this book , the two speech - act approaches tend to generate two ... presents itself most readily as a speech act , on the other hand , when it is the utterance of a single speaker who ...
... two hundred and fifty at the utmost ; nor was anything promised either for the present or in future ... ( Austen 362-3 ) Carried away by the socially constitutive power of speech acts Performative Language and Visionary Poetry 15.
... present methodological challenges of their own . It is less obvious than in the case of the drama or novel that speech - act theory is even relevant to the inter- pretation of poetic texts . When Wordsworth proposes the language really ...
... present them- selves , which together provide a basis for adapting Wittgenstein's discus- sion to the context of poetic utterance . First , Wittgenstein redirects his definition of imagining back toward an analogy with perception , but ...
Contents
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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 |