A Rhetoric of Motives

Ranked #14 in Rhetoric

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...
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