Literature As Conduct: Speech Acts In Henry James Project Muse Upcc Books

The work of a master critic writing at the peak of his powers, this magisterial book draws on speech act theory, as it originated with J. L. Austin and was further developed by Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, to investigate the many dimensions of doing things with words in James's fiction.Three modes of speech act occur in James's novels. First, James's writing of his fictions is performative. He puts on paper words that have the power to raise in the reader the phantoms of imaginary persons. Second, James's writing does things with words that do other things in their turn, including conferring on the reader responsibility for further judgment and action: for example, teaching James's novels or writing about them. Finally, the narrators and characters in James's fictions utter speech acts that are forms of doing things with words- promises, declarations, excuses, denials, acts of bearing witness, lies, decisions publicly attested, and the like. The action of each work by James, he shows, is brought about by its own idiosyncratic repertoire of speech acts.In careful readings of six major examples, The Aspern Papers,The Portrait of a Lady, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Sense of the Past, Miller demonstrates the value of speech act theory for reading literature. J. Hillis Miller is UCI Distinguished Research Professor at the University of California at Irvine. One of the most recent many books is Speech Acts in Literature. "What does it mean to lead a moral life? In her first extended study of moral philosophy, Judith Butler offers a provocative outline for a new ethical practice -- one responsive to the need for critical autonomy and grounded in a new sense of the human subject. Butler takes as her starting point one's ability to answer the questions: "What have I done?" and "What ought I to do?" She shows that these question can be answered only by asking a prior question, "Who is this "I" who is under an obligation to give an account of itself and to act in certain ways?" Because I find that I cannot give an account of myself without accounting for the social conditions under which I emerge, ethical reflection requires a turn to social theory. In three powerfully crafted and lucidly written chapters, Butler demonstrates how difficult it is to give an account of oneself, and how this lack of self-transparency and narratibility is crucial to an ethical understanding of the human. In brilliant dialogue with Adorno, Levinas, Foucault, and other thinkers, she eloquently argues the limits, possibilities, and dangers of contemporary ethical thought. Butler offers a critique of the moral self, arguing that the transparent, rational, and continuous ethical subject is an impossible construct that seeks to deny the specificity of what it is to be human. We can know ourselves only incompletely, and only in relation to a broader social world that has always preceded us and already shaped us in ways we cannot grasp. If inevitably we are partially opaque to ourselves, how can giving an account of ourselves define the ethical act? And doesn't an ethical system that holds us impossibly accountable for full self-knowledge and self-consistency inflict a kind of psychic violence, leading to a culture of self-beratement and cruelty? How does the turn to social theory offer us a chance to understand the specifically social character of our own unknowingness about ourselves? In this invaluable book, by recasting ethics as a project in which being ethical means becoming critical of norms under which we are asked to act, but which we can never fully choose, Butler illuminates what it means for us as fallible creatures to create and share an ethics of vulnerability, humility, and ethical responsiveness."--Provided by publisher The work of a master critic writing at the peak of his powers, this magisterial book draws on speech act theory, as it originated with J. L. Austin and was further developed by Paul de Man and Jacques Derrida, to investigate the many dimensions of doing things with words in Jamess fiction. Three modes of speech act occur in Jamess novels. First, Jamess writing of his fictions is performative. He puts on paper words that have the power to raise in the reader the phantoms of imaginary persons. Second, Jamess writing does things with words that do other things in their turn, including conferring on the reader responsibility for further judgment and for example, teaching Jamess novels or writing about them. Finally, the narrators and characters in Jamess fictions utter speech acts that are forms of doing things with words promises, declarations, excuses, denials, acts of bearing witness, lies, decisions publicly attested, and the like. The action of each work by James, he shows, is brought about by its own idiosyncratic repertoire of speech acts. In careful readings of six major examples, The Aspern Papers, The Portrait of a Lady, The Awkward Age, The Wings of the Dove, The Golden Bowl, and The Sense of the Past, Miller demonstrates the value of speech act theory for reading literature. The work of a master critic, this book draws on speech act theory, to investigate the many dimensions of doing things with words in Henry James's fiction. The author shows that three modes of speech act occur in James's novels and the action of each work is brought about by its own idiosyncratic repertoire J. Hillis Miller. Includes Bibliographical References (p. 327-343) And Index.