Kenneth Burke's innovative use of dramatism and dialectical method have made him a powerful critical force in an extraordinary variety of disciplines—education, philosophy, history, psychology, religion, and others. While most widely acclaimed as a literary critic, Burke has elaborated a perspective toward the study of behavior and society that holds immense significance and rich insights for sociologists. This original anthology brings together for the first time Burke's key writings on symbols and social relations to offer social scientists access to Burke's thought. In his superb introductory essay, Joseph R. Gusfield traces the development of Burke's approach to human action and its relationship to other similar sources of theory and ideas in sociology; he discusses both Burke's influence on sociologists and the limits of his perspective. Burke regards literature as a form of human behavior—and human behavior as embedded in language. His lifework represents a profound attempt to understand the implications for human behavior based on the fact that humans are "symbol-using animals." As this volume demonstrates, the work that Burke produced from the 1930s through the 1960s stands as both precursor and contemporary key to recent intellectual movements such as structuralism, symbolic anthropology, phenomenological and interpretive sociology, critical theory, and the renaissance of symbolic interaction.

On Symbols and Society (Heritage of Sociology Series)

Politics & Social Sciences

Burke, Kenneth

Social Sciences

University of Chicago Press

Kenneth Burke's innovative use of dramatism and dialectical method have made him a powerful critical force in an extraordinary variety of disciplines—education, philosophy, history, psychology, religion, and others. While most widely acclaimed as a literary critic, Burke has elaborated a perspective toward the study of behavior and society that holds immense significance and rich insights for sociologists. This original anthology brings together for the first time Burke's key writings on symbols and social relations to offer social scientists access to Burke's thought. In his superb introductory essay, Joseph R. Gusfield traces the development of Burke's approach to human action and its relationship to other similar sources of theory and ideas in sociology; he discusses both Burke's influence on sociologists and the limits of his perspective. Burke regards literature as a form of human behavior—and human behavior as embedded in language. His lifework represents a profound attempt to understand the implications for human behavior based on the fact that humans are "symbol-using animals." As this volume demonstrates, the work that Burke produced from the 1930s through the 1960s stands as both precursor and contemporary key to recent intellectual movements such as structuralism, symbolic anthropology, phenomenological and interpretive sociology, critical theory, and the renaissance of symbolic interaction.

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

A Grammar of Motives (Classic Reprint)

Excerpt from A Grammar of MotivesWe sought to formulate the basic stratagems which people employ, in endless variations, and consciously or unconsciously, for the out witting or cajoling Of one another. Since all these devices had a you and me quality about them, being addressed to some person or to some advantage, we classed them broadly under the heading of a Rhet orie. There were other notes, concerned with modes of expression and appeal in the fine arts, and with purely psychological or psychoanalytic matters. These we classed under the heading of Symbolic.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

Philosophy

Forgotten Books

Excerpt from A Grammar of Motives We sought to formulate the basic stratagems which people employ, in endless variations, and consciously or unconsciously, for the out witting or cajoling Of one another. Since all these devices had a you and me quality about them, being addressed to some person or to some advantage, we classed them broadly under the heading of a Rhet orie. There were other notes, concerned with modes of expression and appeal in the fine arts, and with purely psychological or psychoanalytic matters. These we classed under the heading of Symbolic. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

From the Preface:The title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in that course. The title should serve well to convey the gist of these various pieces. For all of them are explicitly concerned with the attempt to define and track down the implications of the term "symbolic action," and to show how the marvels of literature and language look when considered form that point of view.

Language As Symbolic Action

Reference

Language Study & Reference

University of California Press

From the Preface:The title for this collection was the title of a course in literary criticism that I gave for many years at Bennington College. And much of the material presented here was used in that course. The title should serve well to convey the gist of these various pieces. For all of them are explicitly concerned with the attempt to define and track down the implications of the term "symbolic action," and to show how the marvels of literature and language look when considered form that point of view.

Language As Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method

A valuable feature of the second edition (1953) of Counter-Statement was the Curriculum Criticum in which the author placed the book in terms of his later work. For this new paperback edition, Mr. Burke continues his "curve of development" in an Addendum which surveys the course of his though in subsequent books (up to the publication of his Collected Poems, 1915 - 1967) and work-in-progress.

Counter-Statement

A Rhetoric of Motives

As critic, Kenneth Burke's preoccupations were at the beginning purely esthetic and literary; but after Counter-Statement (1931), he began to discriminate a "rhetorical" or persuasive component in literature, and thereupon became a philosopher of language and human conduct. In A Grammar of Motives (1945) and A Rhetoric of Motives (1950), Burke's conception of "symbolic action" comes into its own: all human activities―linguisitc or extra-linguistic―are modes of symbolizing; man is defined as the symbol-using (and -misusing) animal. The critic's job becomes one of the interpreting human symbolizing wherever he finds it, with the aim of illuminating human motivation. Thus the reach of the literary critic now extends to the social and ethical. A Grammar of Motives is a "methodical meditation" on such complex linguistic forms as plays, stories, poems, theologies, metaphysical systems, political philosophies, constitutions. A Rhetoric of Motives expands the field to human ways of persuasion and identification. Persuasion, as Burke sees it, "ranges from the bluntest quest of advantage, as in sales promotion or propaganda, through courtship, social etiquette, education, and the sermon, to a 'pure' form that delights in the process of appeal for itself alone, without ulterior purpose. And identification ranges from the politician who, addressing an audience of farmers, says, 'I was a farm boy myself,' through the mysteries of social status, to the mystic's devout identification with the sources of all being."

"But the point of Burke's work, and the significance of his achievement, is not that he points out that religion and language affect each other, for this has been said before, but that he proceeds to demonstrate how this is so by reference to a specific symbolic context. After a discussion 'On Words and The Word,' he analysess verbal action in St. Augustine's Confessions. He then discusses the first three chapters of Genesis, and ends with a brilliant and profound 'Prologue in Heaven,' an imaginary dialogue between the Lord and Satan in which he proposes that we begin our study of human motives with complex theories of transcendence,' rather than with terminologies developed in the use of simplified laboratory equipment. . . . Burke now feels, after some forty years of search, that he has created a model of the symbolic act which breaks through the rigidities of the 'sacred-secular' dichotomy, and at the same time shows us how we get from secular and sacred realms of action over the bridge of language. . . . Religious systems are systems of action based on communication in society. They are great social dramas which are played out on earth before an ultimate audience, God. But where theology confronts the developed cosmological drama in the 'grand style,' that is, as a fully developed cosmological drama for its religious content, the 'logologer' can be further studied not directly as knowledge but as anecdotes that help reveal for us the quandaries of human governance." --Hugh Dalziel Duncan from Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke, 1924 - 1966, edited by William H. Rueckert (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969).

The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Burke, Kenneth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Burke, Kenneth

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Burke, Kenneth. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

On Symbols and Society (Heritage of Sociology Series)

On Symbols and Society (Heritage of Sociology Series)

A Grammar of Motives (Classic Reprint)

A Grammar of Motives (Classic Reprint)

Language As Symbolic Action

Language As Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method

Counter-Statement

A Rhetoric of Motives

A Rhetoric of Motives

The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology