Abstract
In this chapter, the two protest poems “Cruciada Copiilor/Children’s Crusade” by the Romanian poet, Ana Blandiana, and “Dulce et Decorum Est/It is Sweet and Good” by the British poet, Wilfred Owen, are examined within the deep stories of their particular production contexts of Ceausescu’s Romania and World War I, respectively. Each poem is then analyzed as a performative within the framework of the renovated felicity conditions, introduced in Chapter 2 based on Austin’s Speech Act Theory, for the speech act of protest. Each analysis focuses on the presuppositional conditions regarding convention, circumstance, words, persons, effects, and positionings, followed by the aspirational conditions with a focus on thoughts, intention, risk, commitment, and subsequent actions. These analyses include discussions of identity in terms of convocativity as well as how these speech acts attain pragmatic legitimacy through the fulfillment of the felicity conditions.
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Gasaway Hill, M.L. (2018). Exploring the Protest Language of Poetry: “ Cruciada Copiilor /Children’s Crusade” and “ Dulce et Decorum Est/It is Sweet and Good ”. In: The Language of Protest. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77419-0_5
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