Performative text Essays

  • The Power Of Words In John Paterson's Hamlet

    1000 Words  | 2 Pages

    defines as a performative utterance--“the uttering of the sentence [that] is, or is a part of, the doing of an action,” e.g. by saying “I thee wed,” one in fact does the wedding (5)--Hamlet in fact does restore “accuracy” to language. Consider that among Hamlet’s final utterances is the affirmation that Fortinbras “has my dying voice” (V.ii.353). Here, Hamlet says he is voting for Fortinbras--and by doing so he does vote for Fortinbras. Unlike a descriptive utterance, a performative utterance cannot

  • An Analysis of Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author

    2702 Words  | 6 Pages

    of the reader? In Roland Barthes’ essay “The Death of the Author,” Barthes asserts that the Author is dead because the latter is no longer a part of the deep structure in a particular text. To him, the Author does not create meaning in the text: one cannot explain a text by knowing about the person who wrote it. A text, however, cannot physically exist disconnected from the Author who writes it. Even if the role of the Author is to mix pre-existing signs, it does not follow that the Author-function

  • Electronic Writing Will Not Make Books Obsolete

    1667 Words  | 4 Pages

    about electronic text are that it is not aesthetically pleasing and it is awkward to read. This is a copout for people unwilling to change with the times. Books will always have a place in writing, but doubters had better hop on the bandwagon soon, because computers and electronic writing are here to stay. In the educational arena, printed texts are becoming increasingly obsolete. The amount and variety of information available on the internet have made reading electronic text not only an option

  • The Role of Dreams in Genesis, Song of Songs, and The Oresteia

    2520 Words  | 6 Pages

    dreams in ancient texts, Freud wrote, “They took it for granted that dreams were related to the world of the supernatural beings in whom they believed, and that they brought inspirations from the gods and demons.  Moreover, it appeared to them that dreams must serve a special purpose in respect of the dreamer; that, as a rule, they predicted the future.”   He goes on to explain the findings of a fellow psychiatrist, Gruppe, who believed that there are two classes of dreams in ancient texts.  The first

  • William Gibson's Neuromancer - Syntactic

    582 Words  | 2 Pages

    Throughout William Gibson's Neuromancer, the text shows many ways of using the syntactic rhetorical strategy. Within the text, many examples show a break in perception or explain quickly areas that span over a long period of time. For all of these reasons Gibson cleverly uses the syntactic approach to allow his readers the freedom to make their own assumptions and to illustrate his plot in this novel Neuromancer. Whether it be changing the point of view from inside the Matrix to indicating Case

  • Author-function

    1045 Words  | 3 Pages

    authors of texts. He uses Foucault’s term “author-function,” which Foucault used in his famous essay “What is an Author?,” to describe this concept. “Author-function” is an elusive term. In essence, it refers to the way that a reader’s concept of the "author" functions in his reading of a text. His interpretation of a text is shaped by his understanding of its author. Without any concept of who the author of a text is, it is easy to develop many different interpretations of that text. However

  • Defining Good Advice

    653 Words  | 2 Pages

    don’t totally agree with this. I think that good advice can come from people we don’t know. For instance, take the three text book examples of giving advice on using contractions. I don’t personally know any of the people that are giving me this advice. The part that I do agree with Robyn is that you do need to trust the person on a personal level. I trust that the authors of these text books know what they are talking about when they give me advice on using contractions. I wouldn’t take advice from a

  • Intertextuality

    1932 Words  | 4 Pages

    intertextuality challenge E.D. Hirsch’s idea that a text has a single meaning created by its author? Explain with reference to examples drawn from any media format. According to American literary critic, E.D. Hirsch, in order to interpret a body of text, one must ask one’s self the only question that can be answered objectively – “what, in all probability, did the author mean to convey?” He believed that the author’s intended meaning equates the meaning of a text and it is in fact, the reader’s duty to uncover

  • Beowulf From Early Anglo-Saxon Text to Hypertext

    3260 Words  | 7 Pages

    Beowulf From Early Anglo-Saxon Text to Hypertext This paper describes the combined use of Mosaic and the World Wide Web as tools that will both allow scholars and researchers to examine ancient manuscripts without the risk of physical damage to the manuscripts, and facilitate greater general public access to the material. The British Library is currently engaged in a project to establish a full image archive relating to the transmission down the ages of one of the earliest known Anglo-Saxon

  • Focalization in Richard Wrights

    1490 Words  | 3 Pages

         Focalization                                        5 - 6 4.     Conclusion                                        6 5.     Bibliography                                        7 1. Introduction The presentation of events in narratology differs greatly with the purpose of the text. Certain events would seem less authentic if they were to be presented in a third-person narrative, other events just can’t be described objectively within a first-person narrative. Sometimes the events call for a non-involved description but on the

  • Hypertext Fiction

    1030 Words  | 3 Pages

    reader and the author of a text. With printed text, the reader has a clearly defined role, where he or she takes in the story exactly as it is told with no say as to where it is going or how they should interpret it. With the development of hypertext fiction, the reader can cross the line into being a sort of author by deciding between options in the story. The reader can create a story suited to them within the boundaries of the hypertext piece as a whole. When a printed text is read, the author becomes

  • Similarities Between Quenby And Ola

    1752 Words  | 4 Pages

    fill in the blanks with facts, which are not from the text. By filling in spaces in the story, the reader creates a plot, which fits into their understanding. In Coover's "Quenby and Ola, Swede and Carl," the plot is ambiguous. Many of these ambiguities are subtle and are easily overlooked, leading the reader to make assumptions about the text. Simple words, phrases, or the language leads the reader to a plot, which almost fits the text. As a reader, I was not satisfied that there was no definitive

  • Four Views of The Sick Rose

    923 Words  | 2 Pages

    Self-sufficient Text" by "using internal evidence only [to analyze the poem] and to determine to what extent the literary text is self-sufficient. It seems to [Riffaterre] that a proper reading entails no more than a knowledge of the language" (39). Riffaterre identifies psychological, philosophical, and genetic interpretations (connected to "mythological tradition") as "aiming outwards." These approaches find the meaning of the text in the relationship of its images to other texts" (40). Riffaterre

  • Drinking and the Dive Bouteille in Antonine Maillet's play Panurge

    1767 Words  | 4 Pages

    Pantagruel d'après Rabelais, Antonine Maillet recreates beautifully the fantastic and incredible atmosphere present in the original works of Rabelais. She cuts and pastes together the most well known and exceptional selections of Rabelais' original text and creates a new story, adding along the way some finishing touches which give the play its Acadien content. One of the themes quite prevalent throughout in the original works is that of drinking and the insatiable pantagruelist thirst. Maillet preserves

  • The Apocalypse of Adam

    2341 Words  | 5 Pages

    implications this text has for its readers. This text is the fifth and last tractate in Nag Hammadi Codex V. The Nag Hammadi library was found in August 1945 in Egypt. When looked at in comparison with other texts found, The Apocalypse of Adam more closely follows the traditions of Jewish apocalyptic literature (Parrott, 67). There has been much debate about the effect of redactors on this text, so there has been a claim that the 13 kingdoms section was added in later by an editor (ibid). The text recovered

  • Electronic Text

    1112 Words  | 3 Pages

    Electronic Text Many people will argue that history began with the advent of the written word. Before books, history was passed by word of mouth and was often lost or altered as it went from generation to generation down through the years. For many years now our civilization has enjoyed books, journals, newspapers, magazines, and many other types of writing. We use these literary tools to record our lives, to invent stories from the imagination so powerful that they make writers into millionaires

  • The Visual Culture

    905 Words  | 2 Pages

    the visual fields have greatly improved, giving weight on the importance of visual material in text. Something that is more visually stimulating can usually make a text more convincing or credible. The term “seeing is believing” proves this fact. As humans, we tend to believe something if we can actually see it, which is why Jay David Bolter has referred to this phenomenon of the changed role of text and graphics as the “visual culture” in his book Writing Space. “Mere words no longer seemed adequate;

  • Women as Undeveloped Men

    1361 Words  | 3 Pages

    which it is written. In ancient Greece, medical texts such as Aristotle’s The Female Role in Generation as well as The Seed and The Nature of the Child, both Hippocratic texts, all reinforced the idea that women are the result of weaker sperm despite differences in the specifics of their arguments. Aristotle wrote about the equivalence of menstrual fluid and male semen, except for menstrual fluid’s inability to generate offspring. The Hippocratic texts concluded that both partners contain sperm, and

  • Creating a Roadmap

    738 Words  | 2 Pages

    effectively through photos, icons, and text. The first key idea is the placement of the photos, icons, or text that will serve as buttons. “As we look around, we find focal points” and it is these points that direct our attention to the important areas of a page. When placing buttons, we do not want to make the size too small or to have a picture obscured behind text. If both text and graphics are used to represent the button, it is visually appealing to keep the text and graphics of equal width. This

  • Thinking Aloud

    1313 Words  | 3 Pages

    True comprehension requires visualization of a text, predicting events in the text, making inferences about the text and clarifying what is not understood about the text in order to lead to higher level thought processes such as personally connecting with the text. Reluctant, beginning or low-skilled readers often do not have the ability to visualize, predict, inference or clarify what they are reading and so they do not truly comprehend what the text is or what it means. Too often, these readers