Kenneth Burke Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Isidor Schneider

Critical Essay by Isidor Schneider

["Counter-Statement"] is a work of revolutionary importance introducing a principle that brings a natural, not a dialectic, clarity into the field of esthetics. It is important (in spite of its title) as statement. What there is in it of counter-statement is of less consequence.

Mr. Burke's new principle is so sane, so sure and useful a standard for esthetic judgment that one wonders how it could have been possible for the many thoughtful and brilliant writers on the subject to have avoided discovering it. The fact is, of course, that the principle is implicit in the work of all sensitive critics, but has never been released in direct statement and has, therefore, never been available for direct application.

The clue to it, I believe, Mr. Burke found in I. A. Richards's experimental studies in the psychology of reader reactions. Richards, coolly exposing his students to unidentified examples of poetry and...
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