Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was an American literary theorist, poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory.Richard Toye, Rhetoric: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. As a literary theorist, Burke was best known for his analyses based on the nature of knowledge. He was one of the first theorists to stray from more traditional rhetoric and view literature as "symbolic action."
Burke was unorthodox, concerning himself not only with literary texts but also with the elements of the text that interacted with the audience: social, historical, political background, author biography, etc."Kenneth Burke." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013.
For his career, Burke has been praised by The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism as "one of the most unorthodox, challenging, theoretically sophisticated American-born literary critics of the twentieth century." His work continues to be discussed by rhetoricians and philosophers."Kenneth Burke." Encyclopædia Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013.
Personal history Kenneth Duva Burke was born on May 5, 1897, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Peabody High School, where he befriended classmates Malcolm Cowley and James Light. He attended Ohio State University to pursue courses in French, German, Greek, and Latin. He moved with his parents to Weehawken, New Jersey, and later enrolled at Columbia University. During his time there, he was a member of the Boar's Head Society. The constraining learning environment impelled Burke to leave Columbia, never receiving a college diploma."Burke, Kenneth Duva." Edited by Bekah Shaia Dickstein, 2004. http://pabook.libraries.psu.edu/palitmap/bios/Burke__Kenneth.html . In Greenwich Village, he kept company with avant-garde writers such as Hart Crane, Malcolm Cowley, Gorham Munson, and later Allen Tate.Selzer, Jack. Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village: Conversing with the Moderns, 1915–1931. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996. Raised by a Christian Science mother, Burke later became an avowed agnostic.
In 1919, he married Lily Mary Batterham, with whom he had three daughters: the feminist, Marxist anthropologist Eleanor Leacock; musician (Jeanne) Elspeth Chapin Hart; and writer and poet France Burke. He later divorced Lily and, in 1933, married her sister Elizabeth Batterham, with whom he had two sons, Michael and Anthony. Burke served as the editor of the modernist literary magazine The Dial in 1923, and as its music critic from 1927 to 1929. He was an avid pianist. He received the Dial Award in 1928 for distinguished service to American literature. He was the music critic of The Nation from 1934 to 1936, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935.Twentieth Century Authors: A Biographical Dictionary of Modern Literature, edited by Stanley J. Kunitz and Howard Haycraft, New York, The H. W. Wilson Company, 1942.
His work on criticism was a driving force in placing him back in the academic spotlight. As a result, he was able to teach and lecture at various colleges, including Bennington College, while continuing his literary work. Many of Burke's personal papers and correspondence are housed at Pennsylvania State University's Special Collections Library. But despite his stint lecturing at universities, Burke was an autodidact and a self-taught scholar."Letters from Kenneth Burke to William H. Rueckert, 1959-1987", edited by William H. Rueckert, West Lafayette, IN: Parlor Press, 2003.
In later life, his New Jersey farm was a popular summer retreat for his extended family, as reported by his grandson Harry Chapin, a popular singer-songwriter. Burke died of heart failure at his home in Andover, New Jersey, age 96."KENNETH BURKE, 96 PHILOSOPHER, WRITER ON LANGUAGE", Boston Globe, November 22, 1993. Accessed July 16, 2008. "Kenneth Burke, a philosopher who was influential in American literary circles, has died. He was 96. Mr. Burke died Friday of heart failure at his home in Andover, N.J."
Persuasions and influences Like many 20th-century theorists and critics, Burke was heavily influenced by Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Friedrich Nietzsche. He was a lifelong interpreter of Shakespeare and also significantly influenced by Thorstein Veblen. He resisted being pigeonholed as a follower of any philosophical or political school of thought, and had a notable and very public break with the Marxists who dominated the literary criticism set in the 1930s.
Burke corresponded with a number of literary critics, thinkers, and writers over the years, including William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Toomer, Hart Crane, and Marianne Moore."List of Correspondents in Kenneth Burke Papers" , Kenneth Burke Papers, Special Collections Library, Pennsylvania State University. Later thinkers who have acknowledged Burke's influence include Harold Bloom, Stanley Cavell, J. Hillis Miller, Susan Sontag (his student at the University of Chicago), Erving Goffman,Mitchell, J. N. (1978). Social Exchange, Dramaturgy and Ethnomethodology: Toward a Paradigmatic Synthesis. New York: Elsevier. Geoffrey Hartman, Edward Said, René Girard, Fredric Jameson, Michael Calvin McGee, Dell Hymes, and Clifford Geertz. Burke was one of the first prominent American critics to appreciate and articulate the importance of Thomas Mann and André Gide; he produced the first English translation of "Death in Venice", which first appeared in The Dial in 1924. It is now considered much more faithful and explicit than H. T. Lowe-Porter's more famous 1930 translation.
Burke's political engagement is evident—A Grammar of Motives takes as its epigraph ad bellum purificandum ("toward the purification of war").
American literary critic Harold Bloom singled out Burke's Counterstatement and A Rhetoric of Motives for inclusion in his book The Western Canon.
Beyond his contemporary influences, Burke took Aristotle's teachings into account while developing his theories on rhetoric. A significant source of his ideas is Aristotle's Rhetoric. Drawing from it, Burke oriented his writing about language specifically to its social context. Similarly, he studied language as involving more than logical discourse and grammatical structure because he believed the social context of language cannot be reduced to principles of pure reason.
Burke draws a line between a Platonic and a more contemporary view of rhetoric, described as "old rhetoric" and "new rhetoric" respectively. The former is defined by persuasion by any means, while the latter is concerned with "identification." Burke's use of the word refers to the process by which a speaker associates themself with certain groups, such as a target audience. His idea of identification is similar to ethos in classical rhetoric, but it also explains the use of logos and pathos in an effort to create a lasting impression on the auditors. It is characterized by "identifying" with a speaker's rhetoric insofar as their words represent a world that seems to be that in which we live. This theory differs from ethos most significantly in Burke's conception of artistic communication that he believes is defined by eloquence, which is "simply the end of art and therefore its essence." The use of rhetoric conveys aesthetic and social competence, which is why a text can rarely be reduced to purely scientific or political implications, according to Burke. Rhetoric forms our social identity by a series of events usually based on linguistics, but more generally by the use of any symbolic figures. He uses the metaphor of a drama to articulate this point, where interdependent characters speak and communicate with each other while allowing the others to do the same. Burke also describes identification as a function of persuasive appeal.Hanson, Gregory. "Kenneth Burke's Rhetorical Theory within the Construction of the Enthnography of Speaking."
Burke defined rhetoric as the "use of words by human agents to form attitudes or to induce actions in other human agents."Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), p. 41. His definition builds on the preexisting ideas of how people understand the meaning of rhetoric. Burke describes rhetoric as using words to move people or encourage action. Furthermore, he described rhetoric as almost synonymous with persuasion (A Rhetoric of Motives, 1950). Burke argued that rhetoric works to bring about change in people. This change can be evident through attitude, motives, or intentions, but it can also be physical. Calling for help is an act of rhetoric. Rhetoric is symbolic action that calls people to physical action. Ultimately, rhetoric and persuasion are interchangeable, according to Burke. Other scholars have similar definitions. Aristotle argued that rhetoric was a tool for persuading people (but also for gaining information) if the speaker knew how. One way in which Aristotle formed his arguments was through syllogism. Another example of how rhetoric was used to persuade was deliberative discourse. Here, politicians and lawyers used speech to pass or reject policies. Sally Gearhart states that rhetoric uses persuasion to induce change. Although she argues that persuasion is violent and harmful, she uses it as a tool herself to bring about change.
Philosophy The political and social power of symbols was central to Burke's scholarship. He felt that through understanding "what is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it", we gain insight into the cognitive basis for our perception of the world. For Burke, the way in which we decide to narrate gives importance to specific qualities over others. He believed this tells us a great deal about how we see the world.
Dramatism Burke called the social and political rhetorical analysis "dramatism" and believed that such an approach to language analysis and language usage helps us understand the basis of conflict, the virtues and dangers of cooperation, and the opportunities of identification and consubstantiality.
Burke defined the rhetorical function of language as "a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in beings that by nature respond to symbols." His definition of humanity states that "man" is "the symbol using, making, and mis-using animal, inventor of the negative, separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making, goaded by the spirit of hierarchy, and rotten with perfection."Burke, Kenneth. "Definition of Man." The Hudson Review 16 4 (1963/1964): 491-514Coe, Richard M. "Defining Rhetoric—and Us: A Meditation on Burke's Definition." Composition Theory for the Postmodern Classroom. Eds. Olson, Gary A. and Sidney I. Dobrin. Albany: SUNY Press, 1994. 332-44. For Burke, some of the most significant problems in human behavior result from instances of symbols using human beings rather than human beings using symbols.
Burke proposed that when we attribute motives to others, we tend to rely on ratios between five elements: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose. This has become known as the dramatistic pentad. The pentad is grounded in his dramatistic method, which considers human communication as a form of action. Dramatism "invites one to consider the matter of motives in a perspective that, being developed from the analysis of drama, treats language and thought primarily as modes of action" (Grammar of Motives, xxii). Burke pursued literary criticism not as a formalistic enterprise but rather as an enterprise with significant sociological impact; he saw literature as "equipment for living," offering folk wisdom and common sense to people and thus guiding the way they lived their lives.
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