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.
Copyright:
2015
Book Details
Book Quality:
Publisher Quality
ISBN-13:
9780813936987
Publisher:
University of Virginia Press
Date of Addition:
01/02/15
Copyrighted By:
the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia