{"product_id":"how-words-make-things-happen-9780199672790","title":"How Words Make Things Happen","description":"Sooner or later, our words take on meanings other than we intended. \u003cem\u003eHow Words Make Things Happen\u003c\/em\u003e suggests that the conventional idea of persuasive rhetoric (which assumes a speaker's control of calculated effects) and the modern idea of literary autonomy (which assumes that 'poetry makes nothing happen') together have produced a misleading account of the relations between words and human action. Words do make things happen. But they cannot be counted on to produce the result they intend. \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eThis volume studies examples from a range of speakers and writers and offers close readings of their words. Chapter 1 considers the theory of speech-acts propounded by J.L. Austin. 'Speakers Who Convince Themselves' is the subject of chapter 2, which interprets two soliloquies by Shakespeare's characters and two by Milton's Satan. The oratory of Burke and Lincoln come in for extended treatment in chapter 3, while chapter 4 looks at the rival tendencies of moral suasion and aestheticism in the poetry of Yeats and Auden. The final chapter, a cause of controversy when first published in the \u003cem\u003eLondon Review of Books\u003c\/em\u003e, supports a policy of unrestricted free speech against contemporary proposals of censorship. Since we cannot know what our own words are going to do, we have no standing to justify the banishment of one set of words in favour of another.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e David Bromwich\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e Oxford Univ PR\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 06\/04\/2019\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 144\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBinding Type:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eWeight:\u003c\/b\u003e 0.60lbs\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eSize:\u003c\/b\u003e 7.80h x 5.20w x 0.60d\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780199672790\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eReview Citation(s): \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eChoice\u003c\/i\u003e 06\/01\/2021\u003cbr\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDavid Bromwich, \u003cem\u003eSterling Professor of English, Yale University\u003c\/em\u003e \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eDavid Bromwich is a scholar of British and American romanticism. He is Sterling Professor of English at Yale University, where he has taught since 1988. Among his books are \u003cem\u003eHazlitt: The Mind of a Critic, Disowned by Memory: Wordsworth's Poetry of the 1790s\u003c\/em\u003e, and \u003cem\u003eThe Intellectual Life of Edmund Burke\u003c\/em\u003e. \u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"Oxford Univ PR","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":44185073942643,"sku":"9.7802E+12","price":71.68,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0555\/9255\/0515\/files\/img_05b1c6a8-02f1-487b-b07f-cdf7dc86fece.jpg?v=1767099418","url":"https:\/\/bookstorenmore.com\/products\/how-words-make-things-happen-9780199672790","provider":"Bookstore N More","version":"1.0","type":"link"}