TY - GEN T1 - Performatively speaking : speech and action in antebellum American literature A1 - Rosenthal, Debra J., 1964- LA - English PP - Charlottesville PB - University of Virginia Press YR - 2015 UL - https://ebooks.jgu.edu.in/Record/jstor_eba_ocn896701861 AB - 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. -- Amazon.com. CN - PS374.S735 R67 2015eb SN - 9780813936963 SN - 0813936969 SN - 9780813936987 SN - 0813936985 SN - 9780813936970 SN - 0813936977 KW - American fiction : 19th century : History and criticism. KW - Speech in literature. KW - Roman américain : 19e siècle : Histoire et critique. KW - Parole dans la littérature. KW - LITERARY CRITICISM : American : General. KW - American fiction KW - Speech in literature KW - Aktionsart KW - Literatur KW - Rede KW - USA KW - 1800-1899 KW - Criticism, interpretation, etc. ER -