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A literary criticism is presented of the novella "Brief einer Unbekannten" by Austrian author Stefan Zweig. Topics discussed include the language use concept of appropriate circumstances, developed by British philosopher of language John L. Austin, the concept of performativity, and the film adaptation of the novella entitled "Yi ge mo sheng nu ren de lai xin" by Chinese actress and director Xu Jinglei.

Speech act theory was developed in the twentieth century by the philosophers J. L. Austin and John Searle. This paper provides a brief introduction to the theory and then explores some aspects of it that seem relevant to concepts in archival science, particularly connections between speech act theory and a conceptualisation of records as persistent representations. The paper focuses on ideas about the role of representation in the performance of speech acts, the potential impact of speech act theory on perceptions of the record, and the importance of societal conventions in understanding the affinities of records to human action. It argues that records have performative characteristics and that, by potentially offering a middle way between the extremes of objectivist and interpretivist views, speech act theory can help us to comprehend relations between records, actions and events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Provides information on the performative basis of modern literary theory. Formation of the term performative; Definition of performative utterances according to authors J.L. Austin, John Searle and Jacques Derrida; Overview of the concept of performative language; Comparison of performative language with allegorical and symbolic languages.

Deals with the notion of the performative, an utterance that accomplishes the act that it designates, proposed by philosopher J. L. Austin. Use of the notion of the performative for literary theory; Function in theory and criticism associated with deconstruction; Role in gender studies and queer theory.