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 62
... sense , to refer to an author's ability to ' create ' reality through poetic or fictional utterance , independently of societal conventions but in accordance with literary conventions that ascribe creative ( or vision- ary , or ...
... Sense and Sensibility , the determining factors in plot development and character motivation are marriage and inheritance , aspects of life in society which are regulated by two of J.L. Austin's prime examples of speech acts , the wed ...
... sense , of Mrs Ferrars's his- trionics ; she will have an elder son Edward and a younger son Robert no matter what she says . Yet her declarations do have the effect of altering Edward's and Robert's legal status as heirs , a fact which ...
... sense in which a poem can ' be ' is not the sense in which , for instance , a tree ' is ' : one would be tempted to call the poem's mode of existence intransitive , if that term could be meaningfully applied to the copula . Poetic ...
... sense of ' handwriting ' ) to the body and the consciousness that produces it . As a speech act uttered by a living Keats , the poem would do just that , but as a text act its impact is reversed so that it marks , instead , the temporal ...
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 |