The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism

“In her learned and wide-ranging The Romantic Performative: Language and Action in British and German Romanticism, Angela Esterhammer demonstrates, among other things, that there was something like a proto-Austinian reflection on the often performative character of language. . . . This is a book that anyone studying performative language in the Romantic period will have to reckon with, and from which they will learn a good deal in the process.”—The Wordsworth Circle
“Into an atmosphere charged with the recovery and reengagement of literary texts, Angela Esterhammer’s effort to recover the notion of history as “intrinsic rather than extrinsic to Romantic texts” comes as a welcomed contribution.”—Literary Research / Recherche Litteraire

This book develops a new context and methodology for reading Romantic literature by exploring philosophies of language from the period 1785-1835. It explores the moral, political, and legal philosophy of Reid, Bentham, Kant and the German Idealists, Humboldt, and Coleridge, and literary texts by Coleridge, Godwin, Hölderlin, and Kleist.

Booknews

Esterhammer (English and comparative literature, U. of Western Ontario, Canada) offers a context and methodology for reading Romantic literature, based on an exploration of philosophies of language from the period 1785 to 1835. She presents Romantic philosophy as a theory of the performative and Romantic literature in terms of that theory, uncovering the historical roots of 20th century ideas about speech acts and performativity. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Angela Esterhammer is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Western Ontario.