Kenneth Burke (1897-1993) was a literary theorist and critic whose work was influential in several fields of knowledge where symbols are a central focus of study. Kenneth Duva Burke was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on May 5, 1897. Burke dropped...

It would be misleading to label the work of Kenneth Burke "literary criticism," for his concerns extend far beyond the confines of that discipline. Burke is the most theoretically challenging, unorthodox, and sophisticated of twentieth-century...

Known as a literary theorist and critic, Kenneth Duva Burke has written one novel--Towards a Better Life (1932)--and has published poetry throughout a career that has been always controversial, always fascinating. Now in his late eighties, Burke is...

Kenneth Burke's concern for the processes of identification underlying rhetorical action can play an important role in mediating tensions between globalism and community interests. Looking to imagination's potential for bridging gaps between individuals and groups offers to combine certain of Burke's key insights with...

Kenneth Burke and argument? Surely it would be more appropriate to speak of Kenneth Burke OR argument, or at least to treat the phrase as an oxymoron. After all, Burke alludes to almost no modern writings in argumentation--although his survey of classical rhetoric...

The American Classics: A Personal Essay, by Denis Donoghue. Yale University Press, 295 pages, $27.Rapping the knuckles of the American classics is good fun-especially if it's done with a light, sharp touch. And nobody gets hurt, certainly not the great dead white males themselves, who...

Since the publication of A Grammar of Motives in 1945 Kenneth Burke has become firmly lodged in the consciousness of an influential group of American writers as a critic almost exquisitely rare, abounding with ideas and enviably in control of the wide range of new knowledge that characterizes the present century. If not widely read—if at times even unreadable—he has had a genuine influence on a few good critics, and, at a more general level, he has become a paradigm of the deliberately serious...

The reason reviewers and editors have had such trouble fastening on Burke's field is that he has no field, unless it be Burkology. In recent years it has become fashionable to say that he is not actually a literary critic, but a semanticist, social psychologist, or philosopher. A much more accurate statement would be that he is not only a literary critic, but a literary critic plus those things and others…. The lifelong aim of Burke's criticism has been … the unification of every...

A subtle and adventurous critic, Kenneth Burke is willing to follow the trail of an idea wherever it may lead, without regard to established sanctities of meaning. In a style that is logical, compact, almost wearisome in its insistence on defining terms and clarifying meanings, he ventures upon the ambitious task of reappraising all hitherto existing critical values. This involves him in a study of linguistics, logic, anthropology, psychology, and methodology. His method—the utilization of the princi...