Speech Acts, Responsibility, and Commitment in Poetry.

Author / Editor
De Gaynesford, Maximilian.

Title
Speech Acts, Responsibility, and Commitment in Poetry.

Published
Peter Robinson, ed. The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 617-37.

Description
Explores poetic speech acts (following the lead of J. L. Austin), treating Chaucer's dedication of his book in TC 5.1856-62 as an exemplary type of performative speech act--"the Chaucer-Type"--characterized by having three explicit constitutive features: "verbal form [grammatically first person singular present indicative active], self-guarantee, and self-reference." Analyzes uses of this type, by Chaucer and by later poets, to argue that speech act theory can be applied fruitfully to the study of poetry.

Contributor
Robinson, Peter, ed.

Alternative Title
The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary British and Irish Poetry.

Chaucer Subjects
Language and Word Studies
Troilus and Criseyde