The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 11.0791 Thursday, 13 April 2000.
Date: Thursday, 13 Apr 2000 13:19:26 +0100
Subject: 11.0775 Re: Milton
Comment: Re: SHK 11.0775 Re: Milton
Sean Lawrence and Clifford Stetner find early sources for the idea that
language "doesn't merely reflect or denote the world but also
constitutes it", to confute my claim that it's a modern idea.
SL> Personally, I think that it's rather implicit in Adam's naming
SL> the animals in Paradise Lost, or the creation of the world by
SL> the word of God, for that matter.
CS>Milton's source here is an even older book.
Isn't the point of the genesis stories that these speech acts are
special because their originate everything? Surely it's modern to think
that language can now do these things.