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...

I have read several times the long title essay of Kenneth Burke's book The Philosophy of Literary Form, and still with the sense of an adventure. It is like following the intrepid explorer who is making a path through the jungle. I indicate the range and density of the speculative field, which is poetic theory, and junglelike; and also the emancipation of Burke the explorer's mind from common academic restraints—especially from the overall cast of sobriety which he, in a cold tone, call...

[In "Freud—and the Analysis of Poetry"] Burke concludes his preliminary "placing" of psychoanalysis with a mysterious allusion to an event which, despite the assurance with which he states it, never took place. The critic, he suggests, cannot rely wholly upon symbolism for his understanding of literature. Another approach is necessary. The important matter for our purposes is to suggest that the examination of a poetic work's internal organization would...

[Burke's subject matter] is clearly language and the way symbolic communication is effected through language. He sees both poems and criticism as manifestations of a universal human activity, symbolic action, and thus not primarily as the making of objects or the formulation of static thoughts or truths. There are two major kinds of critics who make this choice, and Burke's method places him with those who are primarily interested in pursuing the similarities between poetry as language and oth...

From about 1940, just about everybody who is anybody in literary criticism, or who would like to be thought of as having something to say about anybody who is anybody in literary criticism, has taken a try at placing Kenneth Burke. A few contemporaries have ventured into the risky game of putting him in his place. Many have attempted to identify themselves with Burke; many have taken over much of his terminology; many have tried out his methods; and, finally, perhaps more presumptuously, a few are trying to...

["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 avo...

[Kenneth Burke's Language as Symbolic Action reveals] a mind for which the gods seem to have decreed equal shares of fertility and futility. Burke has produced a body of literary and social criticism second only to that of Edmund Wilson, yet it has not "added up." He has been less careful of his audience than Wilson, more interested in the permutation of his ideas, more self-indulgent and obsessive in his concerns. This is only one of many paradoxes surrounding Burke, for in his writing...

[In The Philosophy of Literary Form,] Mr. Burke stands in the line of critics like Richards and Empson whose key questions are: What does poetry mean? Why is it written? How does it accomplish its end? Such a criticism could only arise within a society which says: "I don't like poetry." It presupposes statements like: "Poetry is wrong because it says things which aren't true," or, "Poetry is wrong because it doesn't do anything useful." It is, i...