Creating States : Studies in the Performative Language of John Milton and William Blake.

Intro -- Contents -- References and Abbreviations -- Prologue: Words, Worlds, Acts, and Visions -- 1 Performative Language and Visionary Poetry -- Parole and Its Contexts -- The Speaker as Performer -- Utterance and Context: Two Directions for Analysis -- Speech Acts in the Text -- The Text as Speech Act -- Sociopolitical versus Phenomenological Performatives -- The Integration of Sociopolitical and Phenomenological Performatives: Searle and Benveniste -- Authority and Subjectivity: Benveniste and Barthes -- The Deconstructive Turn -- 2 Speech Acts and World-Creation -- Supernatural Performatives -- Genesis 1-3 in the Philosophy of Language -- Phenomenological Performatives: The 'P' Myth -- Sociopolitical Performatives: The 'J' Myth -- Scenes of Creation in Philosophy and Literature -- 3 The Language of Inspiration in Milton's Prose -- Milton's Word: Theology and Logology -- 'General' and 'Special' Inspiration -- Self-Presentation in The Reason of Church-Government -- Milton's Promise -- Legal Contract and Ecclesiastical Oath -- The Elision of the Performative -- 4 Paradise Lost: The Creation of Poetry and the Poetry of Creation -- Creation and 'Firstness' in the Invocations -- The Performativity of Divine Speech -- Divine Creation and Verbal Performance -- Naming and Subjectivity -- 5 The Circumference of Vision: Songs of Innocence and of Experience -- Perspectives on Blake's Vision -- 'Introduction' to Innocence: The Performative as Self-Expression -- Relations in the State of Innocence -- 'Introduction' to Experience: The Performative as Institutionalized Utterance -- Relations in the State of Experience -- 6 Binding the Infinite: Blake's Brief Epics -- Bounding and Binding -- Naming in The Book of Urizen -- The 'Argument' of The Marriage of Heaven and Hell -- The Intersection of Will and Act -- 'A Song of Liberty'.

7 Blake's Jerusalem: Statements and States -- Vision, Prophecy, Reading, and Performance -- Adamic Language and Blakean Naming -- Inspiration: A Revision -- Creation: A Division -- Moral Law and Divine Voice -- Creating States -- Living Words -- The Community of Phrases -- Bibliography -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.

A study of the language of visionary poetry, making use of the principles of speech-act philosophy to analyze the creative properties of utterance from the Bible to the work of Milton and Blake.

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Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2024. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.