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 principle of polarity—is simple but daring: he takes a number of commonly accepted truths and values, reduces them to their elementary premises, and then quietly inquires if the converse could not be regarded as equally true. This process he calls achieving perspective through incongruity. In other words, he demonstrates that a statement may be both true and false at the same time. Its "truth" depends on the frame of reference within which it is situated, the point of orientation from which it is viewed. By means of this method he is able to puncture the pretensions of many a vested critical system. His primary object is to secure terminological exactitude by reducing meanings, which are essentially social in origin and purpose, to their component elements.
It is not likely that Kenneth Burke will be widely read or that he will receive generous public recognition. The reason is not far to seek. His books are too technical, packed too solidly with speculative material that requires careful analysis. He is too skeptical, too discriminating and iconoclastic a thinker. His preoccupation with the nature of meaning, his command of a style that is laboriously precise—these alone will cause him to remain the intellectual leader of a small minority. He is the critic's critic par excellence. Not that he is unable to write simply; he does, in fact, write simply; but the material he deals with is often so recondite and complex that no other style seems possible for his scrupulous and exacting intelligence. (pp. 74-5)
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