How to Do Things With Poems Performativity in the Poetry of C.P. Cavafy
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Maria Boletsi
Abstract
The theory of the performative – in its initial version by J.L. Austin and in its poststructuralist revisions – allows us to explore speech acts within C.P. Cavafy's poem as well as how his poems themselves can function as performatives. Performativity in these poems functions along four interrelated planes of performance, all of which are central to Cavafy's poetry: the erotic, the theatrical/public, the historical, and the linguistic. Recurring instances of “infelicitous” performatives in Cavafy's poems, especially unkept promises, reveal the critical and creative potential of this infelicity. The repeated failures and communicative gaps in the poems nevertheless work towards a notion of a felicitous poetic event, in which failure is transformed into a critical act and a motivating force for practices of constant revaluation.
© Walter de Gruyter
Articles in the same Issue
- The Avant-Garde and Modern Sovereignty. By Way of Introduction
- Militant Politics and Avant-garde Performance Art in the Early Futurist Movement
- “You Feed Us So that We Can Fight Against You”. Concepts of the Art and State in the Hungarian Avant-Garde
- Reciting Shells. Dada and, Dada in & Dadaists on the First World War
- Dada as Politics
- L'avant-garde littéraire roumaine et la politique
- Mapping Old Traces of the New. Towards a Historical Topography of Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde(s) in the European Cultural Field(s)
- Wiener Gruppe und Transfurismus. Zwei Beispiele für die literaturgeschichtliche Weiterwirkung der historischen Avantgarden im deutschen und russischen Sprachraum
- Schwebe der Körper, Stammeln der Sprache. Strategien literarischer und sexueller Subversion bei Julia Kristeva und Gilles Deleuze
- How to Do Things With Poems Performativity in the Poetry of C.P. Cavafy
- Regarding Paintings. Works of El Greco in Simon Vestdijk's Het vijfde zegel
- Istanbul, 1945 Erich Auerbach's Philology of Extremity
- Rezensionen
- Inhalt des 41. Bandes (2006)
Articles in the same Issue
- The Avant-Garde and Modern Sovereignty. By Way of Introduction
- Militant Politics and Avant-garde Performance Art in the Early Futurist Movement
- “You Feed Us So that We Can Fight Against You”. Concepts of the Art and State in the Hungarian Avant-Garde
- Reciting Shells. Dada and, Dada in & Dadaists on the First World War
- Dada as Politics
- L'avant-garde littéraire roumaine et la politique
- Mapping Old Traces of the New. Towards a Historical Topography of Early Twentieth-Century Avant-Garde(s) in the European Cultural Field(s)
- Wiener Gruppe und Transfurismus. Zwei Beispiele für die literaturgeschichtliche Weiterwirkung der historischen Avantgarden im deutschen und russischen Sprachraum
- Schwebe der Körper, Stammeln der Sprache. Strategien literarischer und sexueller Subversion bei Julia Kristeva und Gilles Deleuze
- How to Do Things With Poems Performativity in the Poetry of C.P. Cavafy
- Regarding Paintings. Works of El Greco in Simon Vestdijk's Het vijfde zegel
- Istanbul, 1945 Erich Auerbach's Philology of Extremity
- Rezensionen
- Inhalt des 41. Bandes (2006)
