Abstract
Performance theory has a long and complex history. Initiated by J. L. Austin’s How To Do Things With Words, it has been critically discussed by Émile Benveniste, Jacques Derrida, and Paul de Man among others. Most recently, media studies and the concept of cultural techniques have added yet another facet to what originated in speech act theory. Although poetry with its musical dimension seems especially prone to be investigated in the field, this is rarely the case. After an overview of the relevant theoretical developments, I analyze William Butler Yeats’s “Among School Children” – with a special focus on its final verse “How can we know the dancer from the dance?” – as a powerful reflection on the performative nature of poetry in general.
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©2016 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Introduction: Poetry and Performance
- Articles
- “Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke”: Aspects of Drama and Performance in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet “Oh My Black Soule”
- Performance, Performativity, and the Medium of Poetry: W. B. Yeats’s “Among School Children”
- Engaging with T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets as a Multimedia Performance
- The Duality of Page and Stage: Constructing Lyrical Voices in Contemporary British Poetry Written for Performance
- Popular Songs, Poetry, and Performance: Observations on an On-going Debate
- ‘I wanna be a Rock Star!’ Lyrical Communication in Self-Referential Rock Songs
- On the Interface between Page and Stage: Interview with Patience Agbabi
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Editorial
- Editorial
- Introduction: Poetry and Performance
- Articles
- “Oh make thy selfe with holy mourning blacke”: Aspects of Drama and Performance in John Donne’s Holy Sonnet “Oh My Black Soule”
- Performance, Performativity, and the Medium of Poetry: W. B. Yeats’s “Among School Children”
- Engaging with T.S. Eliot: Four Quartets as a Multimedia Performance
- The Duality of Page and Stage: Constructing Lyrical Voices in Contemporary British Poetry Written for Performance
- Popular Songs, Poetry, and Performance: Observations on an On-going Debate
- ‘I wanna be a Rock Star!’ Lyrical Communication in Self-Referential Rock Songs
- On the Interface between Page and Stage: Interview with Patience Agbabi