Performatively speaking : speech and action in antebellum American literature / Debra J. Rosenthal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Rosenthal, Debra J., 1964- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--19th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Speech in literature.

Genre:

Criticism, interpretation, etc.

Physical Description:

ix, 136 pages ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Charlottesville ; London : University of Virginia Press, 2015.

Summary:

In Performatively Speaking, Debra Rosenthal draws on speech act theory to open up the current critical conversation about antebellum American fiction and culture and to explore what happens when writers use words not just to represent action but to constitute action itself. Examining moments of discursive action in a range of canonical and noncanonical works-T. S. Arthur's temperance tales, Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall, Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter; Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, and Herman Melville's Moby-Dick-she shows how words act when writers no longer hold to a difference between writing and doing. The author investigates, for example, the voluntary self-binding nature of a promise, the formulaic but transformative temperance pledge, the power of Ruth Hall's signature or name on legal documents, the punitive hate speech of Hester Prynne's scarlet letter A, the prohibitory vodun hex of Simon Legree's slave Cassy, and Captain Ahab's injurious insults to second mate Stubb. Through her comparative methodology and historicist and feminist readings, Rosenthal asks readers to rethink the ways that speech and action intersect. Book jacket.

Contents:

Introduction: Discursive action, or doing by saying

Slave promises and the temperance pledge

Theorizing the signature in Fanny Fern's Ruth Hall

The Scarlet A as action

Verbal violence in Uncle Tom's Cabin

Action and injurious speech in Moby-Dick

Conclusion: The right words and national standing.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780813936963

0813936969

9780813936970

0813936977

OCLC:

890377273