Document Type

Dissertation

Date of Award

1977

Keywords

Burke, Kenneth, Criticism and interpretation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

English, General Literature, and Rhetoric

First Advisor

John Macksoud

Second Advisor

Zack Bowen

Third Advisor

Bernard S. Levy

Abstract

This dissertation on Kenneth Burke locates him in selected contexts of modern thought and New Criticism designed to reveal his distinctive contribution as a theorist of language and literature.

Most of the substantial studies of Burke that we have, like William Rueckert's excellent book, Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations, are intrinsic in method. They explain Burke's system from within, as a formalist critic would explain a poem. Similarly, the best works on modern criticism, such as Murray Krieger's, The New Apologists for Poetrv, and the last part of William K. Wimsatt and Cleanth Brooks's Literary Criticism: A Short History, leave Burke out of account, because of the difficulty of assimilating him to the well—defined categories of modern criticism. In consequence, there are few if any studies which seek to understand Burke in comparison with and contrast to other thinkers who have made a significant impact on our sense of language and literature. Such is my aim.

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