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 55
... beginning of Shakespeare's play , Here I disclaim all my paternal care 5 Two of the most important critiques of speech - act theory and its relation to literature , Stan- ley Fish's long essay on Coriolanus ( ' How to Do Things with ...
... Beginning with a deictic ' this , ' the text appears to ground itself in present reality , connecting the manuscript itself ( the poet's ' hand ' in the sense of ' handwriting ' ) to the body and the consciousness that produces it . As ...
... beginning and the end in lived reality and , through the copula , in the category of being : " This Is Just to Say / I have eaten ' ; ' they were delicious . ' The past tense is significant : the plums being no more , their existence ...
... beginning to define the historically specific posi- tion that literature may have held among other forms of social relationship , specifically its overwhelmingly , and perhaps crucial , ideological function , its role in the forging of ...
... beginning a sentence with ' I presume ( that ) ... ' or ' I swear ... , ' the speaker converts a proposition into a subjective utterance . The utterance is equivalent to an act as a logical consequence of Benveniste's central tenet ...
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 |