A Rhetoric of MotivesAs critic, Kenneth Burke's preoccupations were at the beginning purely esthetic and literary; but after Counter-Statement (1931), he began to discriminate a "rhetorical" or persuasive component in literature, and thereupon became a philosopher of language and human conduct. In A Grammar of Motives (1945) and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), Burke's conception of "symbolic action" comes into its own: all human activities—linguisitc or extra-linguistic—are modes of symbolizing; man is defined as the symbol-using (and -misusing) animal. The critic's job becomes one of the interpreting human symbolizing wherever he finds it, with the aim of illuminating human motivation. Thus the reach of the literary critic now extends to the social and ethical. A Grammar of Motives is a "methodical meditation" on such complex linguistic forms as plays, stories, poems, theologies, metaphysical systems, political philosophies, constitutions. A Rhetoric of Motives expands the field to human ways of persuasion and identification. Persuasion, as Burke sees it, "ranges from the bluntest quest of advantage, as in sales promotion or propaganda, through courtship, social etiquette, education, and the sermon, to a 'pure' form that delights in the process of appeal for itself alone, without ulterior purpose. And identification ranges from the politician who, addressing an audience of farmers, says, 'I was a farm boy myself,' through the mysteries of social status, to the mystic's devout identification with the sources of all being." |
Contents
The Use of Miltons Samson 35 | 3 |
Quality of Arnolds Imagery | 9 |
Imagination | 12 |
Tragic Terms for Personality Types | 15 |
The Identifying Nature of Property | 23 |
The Autonomy of Science | 29 |
Ingenuous and Cunning Identifications | 35 |
Realistic Function of Rhetoric | 43 |
Diderot on Pantomime | 142 |
De Gourmont on Dissociation | 149 |
Administrative Rhetoric in Machiavelli | 158 |
Dantes De Vulgari Eloquentia | 167 |
Infancy Mystery and Persuasion | 174 |
Positive Dialectical and Ultimate Terms | 183 |
Ultimate Elements in the Marxist Persuasion | 189 |
Sociology of Knowledge vs Platonic Myth | 197 |
Persuasion | 49 |
Identification | 55 |
Formal Appeal | 65 |
Image and Idea | 84 |
Rhetorical Analysis in Bentham | 90 |
Marx on Mystification | 101 |
Terministic Reservations in View of Cromwells Motives | 110 |
Empson on Pastoral Identification | 123 |
Priority of the Idea | 132 |
Mythic Ground and Context of Situation | 203 |
Castiglione | 212 |
Kafka The Castle | 233 |
THE RANGE OF MOUNTINGS | 301 |
ELATION AND ACCIDIE IN HOPKINS | 313 |
ULTIMATE IDENTIFICATION | 328 |
| 337 | |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abstract action Adonis ambiguities anagogic analysis appeal Aristotle attitude audience Babylon become Bentham Benthamite called cerned Cicero communication concern considered consubstantial courtier courtly courtship cult death derived device dialectical distinction divine division doctrine dyslogistic element Empedocles entelechy epideictic essence esthetic ethical eulogistic expression figure formal function Gerard Manley Hopkins German Ideology ground Hence hierarchic human ideal ideas identification ideology imagery imagination individual ingredient insofar instance involved Isocrates killing kind La Rochefoucauld language literary look Machiavelli magic Mannheim Marx Marxist means ment merely modern moral mystery mystic myth mythic nature pantomime particular person poem poet poetic poetry political principle purposes Quintilian realm relation reverence rhetorical motive roundabout sacrifice scientific sense sexual situation social Socratic spirit statement stress symbolic terminology things thinking thought tion Tonio Kröger transcending transformation translation treated ultimate universal variants verbal vocabulary whereby word