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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... 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 discourse posits reality in a self - reliant and self - reflexive way that does not ...
... tree ' and ' ser- pent ' as words which illustrate the metaphoricity inherent in the grammati- cal and semantic structure of language . The biblical allusion is conspicuous in the German text , where Nietzsche chooses the unusual phrase ...
... tree ( der Baum ) , and the bias inherent in our decision to refer to a winding motion in the name of the serpent ( die Schlange ) but not of the worm , the resonance of his examples tempts us to conclude that they are not arbitrary but ...
... tree . As he substitutes for the nomen- clature model his own model of the sign as a link between concept and sound - pattern , Saussure retains arbor as his main example . In other words , he co - opts the central images of the Garden ...
... tree ' is so uttered that it no longer tells of a relation between the man - I- and the tree -Thou - , but establishes the perception of the tree as object by the human consciousness , the barrier between subject and object has been set ...
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 |