ENGL 2P82 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Young Lords, Empty Spaces, Poetic Justice
13 Nov 2016
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Document Summary
The significance of the promise: quite obviously, promises and broken promises are crucial in the play. A promise really is a response to the spatial and temporal limitations of human existence. We promise that we will be somewhere where we are now not because we cannot be everywhere. We promise that we will do something later because human actions take time to complete. A promise is a response to absence and temporal finitude. In response to the spatial and temporal limits, the promise is a relationship between intentions, words and actions. The words or signs that we use to make the promise express a prior intention and they refer to a future action that will fulfill that intention. The action that fulfills a promise, brings about closure, temporal closure and linguistic closure. This kind of closure, is the essence of what a number of characters in the play call honor.
