Reviews of Kenneth Burke Grammar of Motives Summary

M. Elizabeth Weiser. Burke, State of war, Words. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2008.

Reviewed by Ryan McGeough, Louisiana State University

Volumes of Burkean scholarship are devoted to i of two purposes: the written report and application of Burke's writings, and the study of Burke himself. In Shush, War, Words, M. Elizabeth Weiser seeks to transcend (in the Burkean sense) these two camps of scholarship—exploring the necessary relation of Burke's ideas in A Grammar of Motives within the scene of war in which he wrote. Carrying on in the tradition of Kenneth Shush in Greenwich Village and Kenneth Burke in the 1930s, Weiser carefully explores Burke's diverse communications with his contemporaries throughout the 1930s and 40s. Where she seeks to differ from past works on Burke is in her method of "rhetoricizing dramatism." This method asks for a historicizing that recognizes dramatism every bit both shaped by Burke's conversations throughout the writing of GM, besides equally responding to a scene of war. In rhetoricizing dramatism, we are to recognize information technology as both a response and an exhortation. By (re)placing Burke within his conversations with the Communist Party, the One-time Left, and the literary figures of his time, likewise noting his recognition that the world around him was slowly marching dorsum to war, Weiser suggests it becomes possible to ameliorate understand Shush'due south aspiration Ad Bellum Purificandum.

Organizing her chapters by pentadic terms, Weiser begins Burke, War, Words with a look at Burke's scene. Noting that Jack Selzer and Ann George "covered extensively Burke'southward early on career in their invaluable Kenneth Burke in the 1930s," Affiliate 1 focuses on the evolution of four cardinal trends in Burke'due south early on idea, and the conversations that developed them (p. 7). The first of these is falling on the bias, Shush's desire to cut beyond the opposing philosophies and traditions in pursuit of a "third style" that transcended conflict not merely by finding common ground, but past recognizing opposing positions as only two of many possible positions. Though Burke hoped this strategy could assist nations avoid armed disharmonize, it rarely availed him as a tool for transcending the conflicts of his contemporaries. Attempting to transcend the differences betwixt Marxist and aesthetic critics, Burke found both camps only idea he was from the other. Weiser notes Burke's second trend as the move towards translation. In attempting to transcend specific positions and philosophies, Burke recognized the importance of helping people to hear opposing positions translated into their own vocabularies. Clearly recognizable in Burke's later piece of work, he "went beyond mere sit-in of their shared social beliefs and instead expanded his understanding of the function of language in orienting all readers toward reality" (p. 12). The tertiary trend—ambiguity and incongruity, credible in Attitudes toward History and Permanence and Change, was Burke's endeavour to detect a linguistic counter to recalcitrance. Rooted in ambiguity, Burke'south fourth trend was his move towards the comic corrective. Burke believed beingness able to see the inherent ambiguity of a world of language users in gild would encourage a charitable mental attitude towards those with whom one disagrees, an attitude encouraging the cooperation that made activity possible.

Of form, the recognition that "every insight contains its own special kind of blindness" was not always popular to adherents to the philosophies that produced those insights (Burke, 1937, p. 41). In Chapter 2, Weiser focuses on the agents with whom Burke conversed. Focused especially on the New Critics and critics at the University of Chicago, Weiser finds that in his conversations in the belatedly 1930s and early 1940s, Burke developed the ideas represented in Philosophy of Literary Form. She also contends that Shush's frustration with beingness misunderstood in these conversations contributed greatly to his addition of the pentad to A Grammar of Motives. Though these misunderstandings were oftentimes caused past Shush's tendency to autumn on the bias, his bias falling also benefited his writing by allowing insights unique to the discussions of his time. Weiser documents a number of the correspondences, harsh reviews, and unwelcomed praise that pushed Burke toward the development of a methodology for dramatism that proposed critics and poets "were not only to examine literature or society, but to diagnose gild through literature and to diagnose literature in order to diagnose guild" (p. 56).

The demand for such diagnoses became increasingly credible as Burke's thought developed into the 1940s. Capacity iii and four focus on dramatism as Burke'south antifacist act in the years just before and throughout World War Ii. In attempting to purify state of war through an inducement to dialogue, Burke vehemently resisted the mass temptation to follow a political strongman. Defying the trend toward monologic unity that even began to take root in the Popular Front, Burke instead sought to counter the drive to a single-voiced public by advocating instead the "babel" of parliament. Weiser opens past noting that in critiquing Hitler's Mein Kempf, Burke claims "the parliament, at its best, is a 'boom-boom' of voices. There is the wrangle of men representing interests lying awkwardly on the bias across one another, sometimes opposing, sometimes vaguely divergent" (p. 58). Burke'southward resistance is far from surprising, equally all five of the peachy strongmen in the conflict offered the something incompatible with Burke's promise for transcendence: certainty. However, Shush's opposition to certainty and desire to find a comic transcendence was greatly challenged past a radical shift in scene. As the U.s. plunged into war in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, Shush found ambiguity in short supply among his peers. However, the horrors of full state of war also reinforced Shush'south commitment to a grammar which enabled social activeness.  By developing the understanding of symbolic activity equally "both description and exhortation. . . [Burke offered] a new call to arms for a generation that had too oft been called to arms—the inducement to a unity of action springing from dialectic" (p. 84). Though it was besides tardily to avert the electric current war, Burke believed in the ability of critic to influence what type of new globe would be erected on the ashes of the former.

The book'due south final two capacity focus on A Grammar of Motives, with affiliate 5 dedicated to the first two parts of GM, and chapter 6 on Burke's purpose in writing it equally illuminated in part 3, as well as the response to the volume given the speedily shifting scene into which Burke published information technology. Weiser provides a close analysis of GM that both conspicuously analyzes the text and situates information technology as Shush'south attempt to respond to the state of war and avoid repeating the mistakes that led to it. As the war climaxed and airtight, Burke believed his shift to comic ambiguity and transcendence would provide a buoy to the post-war globe capable of guiding them as they paused and contemplated where to go next. However, the pause Burke hoped to capitalize on never occurred. The fall of the Axis powers gave way to the Cold War and the fear of anything, which Burke immediately recognized as devastating to his call to transcend fanaticism and dissipation with new linguistic perspectives. Burke'southward recognition is nowhere clearer than in his starting GM'south conclusion by stating "so much for the Grammer of Motives" (p. 441). In many ways, his pessimism was well founded—Burke did not imagine the long term significance of GM amongst critics and academics, but he could clearly run into that he had written a manuscript for a moment that never materialized.

For those who wish to read Shush as an ahistorical thinker whose ideas entirely transcended the scene in which he wrote, this book is a striking refutation. All the same, those less interested in Shush the romantic poet and more interested in Burke the Word Human in the parlor will find little that is stunningly new in the text. Yet Weiser suggests that developing our understanding of Burke's scene actually makes volume more timeless—knowing the scene of its origination moves u.s.a. to know when advertizing bellum purificandum is precisely the medicine our own fourth dimension needs. Her project of rhetoricizing dramatism helps usa to empathize it as a call to action, not academic introspection. What Weiser's project of rhetoricizing dramatism lacks in terms of covering new ground, information technology more than than makes up for in its careful exploration of existing terrain.

Therein lies the neat value of Shush, War, Words—its broad entreatment. Seasoned Burkean scholars will appreciate Weiser'south archival work. It is difficult to read Burke's correspondences throughout the volume and not oftentimes remember aphorisms from Burke's work in a new low-cal. To those who accept struggled with connecting and conceptualizing Shush'south expansive writings (a challenge many of Burke'due south contemporaries found overwhelming), these small epiphanies are of great value. Though Weiser's primal focus is A Grammar of Motives, her analysis of Attitudes Toward History and Permanence and Alter provide an insightful mapping of the development of Shush'southward thought through Grammar, and even as he began work on A Rhetoric of Motives. Accordingly, new students of Burke'southward works will undoubtedly find this book illuminating for its articulate discussion and detailed contextualization of Burke's theoretical framework and the world he hoped his writings would help create.

Review of Burke, War, Words by G. Elizabeth Weiser past Ryan McGeough is licensed nether a Artistic Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works three.0. Based on a work at www.kbjournal.org.

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