How to Do Things with Literature
Blasphemous Speech Acts, Satanic Intentions, and the Uncommunicativeness of Verses
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4375671 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Daniel Allington (0000-0002-5378-0552, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 473-523 |
| Publication date | 2008-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Poetics Today (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507 |
| Publisher | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/03335372-074 |
| OpenAlex | W1971531170 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 31 |
Literature has at times been theorized in terms of a message passing from author to reader, and this has often been done by reference to general theories of language use: the work is the vehicle of intentions that are realized (or not) in the reader's responses; the work is a "speech act" that operates on the reader and causes his or her responses. Although this article argues that such theorizations mistake the role of communication in literature, it suggests that they nonetheless reflect prevalent ways of talking about literary texts, which should be investigated as tactically useful techniques employed in discourse between readers (and nonreaders) of those texts. Drawing on the work of a range of thinkers, notably Quentin Skinner and Jerome McGann, this article then proposes an alternative application of the concepts of authorial intention and speech act to the genesis of literary works. This is followed by a study of early contributions to the public controversy over The Satanic Verses, in which Lena Jayyusi's analysis of moral action descriptions is used to draw attention to commentators' ideological attempts to structure this novel as a speech-like action carried out by its author Salman Rushdie
Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Ideology · Indirect speech · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphysics · Mistake · Philosophy of language · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Speech act · Humor Studies and Applications · Law · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy · Rhetoric and Communication Studies
The Singularity of Literature
Whose Acts? Which Communities? A Reply to David Gorman
The historical assessment of speech acts
Premeditation and happenstance
Text Is Not Communication
Meaning
Austin on Locutionary and Illocutionary Acts
Intention and Convention in Speech Acts
Three Kinds of Intention
Misunderstandings and hurt
First steps towards a rhetorical psychology of literary interpretation
Conventions and the Understanding of Speech Acts
"Literary Interpretation" and Cognitive Literary Studies
Modes of Interpretation and Interpretative Constraints
Motives, Intentions and the Interpretation of Texts
The "Meaning" of a Literary Work
What Is the Meaning of a Text
On Performing and Explaining Linguistic Actions
Philosophy and Literature
Situated Learning
With the Compliments of the Author
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,1 |
| Citation span | 2016 - 2016 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |