Kenneth Burke

Three writings from Kenneth Burke due on March 27, 2017

"Introduction" to A Grammar of Motives (1945)
"Introduction" to A Rhetoric of Motives (1950)
“Terministic Screens” from Language as Symbolic Action (1966)

According to Wikipedia "As a literary theorist, Burke was best known for his analyses based on the nature of knowledge. Furthermore, he was on of the first individuals to stray away from more traditional rhetoric and view literature as 'symbolic action.' Burke was unorthodox, concerning himself not only with literary texts but with the elements of the text that interacted with the audience: social, historical, political background, author biography, etc. For his career, Burke has been praised by The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism as 'one of the most unorthodox and challenging, and theoretically sophisticated American-born literary critics of the twentieth century.'"

After reading the three articles above, I decided to make a slideshow for my class presentation on Burke. The author challenged my ability to understand. Most of those difficulties were due to the language used by Burke to describe his concepts. Knowing the key terms of each section before reading the articles became a necessity for continuing. So, I highlighted the key terms and researched essays available on JSTOR to arrive at a general understanding before completely reading all three papers.

A larger copy of my presentation is available here.