Burke, Kenneth (Duva) 1897–: Critical Essay by Marius Bewley

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, a state of affairs to which his unreadability (such as it is) has no doubt contributed. 'Burke's ethical doctrine, the "neo-liberal ideal"', writes a recent and enthusiastic appraiser, 'advanced pan-realism definitely into the realm of the pragmatic'. So we see that Burke is not being taken lightly. (p. 254)

[His] criticism has the support and encouragement of a considerable group—and it is a group that has a good chance of growing in influence. This critical popularity is partly owing to the fact that although Burke has committed himself against the technological aspect of contemporary society he has evolved a 'methodology' of criticism that cannot help playing into the hands of those to whom technology may be much less present as a danger. In other words, though Burke's virtues are his own, he has certain qualities easily transmissible as vices at precisely that level he most thoroughly deplores. Another reason for a possible 'Burke boom' in America is that he has developed a vocabulary that insulates its user against the shock of the work of art itself—and it must be remembered that the American literary critic is naturally very sensitive about the distance that separates his own language and modes of feeling from the English literary tradition. To shift the Coleridgean phrase, he is uneasily aware that he must effect a willing suspension of nationality during the process of evaluation unless a distorted judgment is to result. To the unpleasantness of this situation Burke seems to have formulated an answer, or rather, a series of answers. 'Formulation' is, I think, the correct term here for there is little that is radically new in Burke. His originality consists chiefly in the creation of a vocabulary so well oiled and metallic that one would almost swear the machine is wholly a new thing. At any rate, it is a 'machine' in which those disciples who wish to put it to such uses will be able to speed away from any very exacting evaluation of a work of art without, in fact, displaying a noticeable cowardice during the process of escape. And finally, Burke's criticism represents an approach to literature sufficiently specialized to become the vested interest of a group. (p. 255)

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