A Rhetoric of Motives

Kenneth Duva Burke (May 5, 1897 – November 19, 1993) was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.

出版者:University of California Press

作者:Kenneth Burke

页数:356

出版时间:1969-10-01

价格:GBP 26.95

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780520015463

图书标签:KennethBurke修辞rhetoricKenneth_Burke哲学BurkeArty.

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."

用户评价

The book offers an explanation of why the traditional/classical notion of rhetoric's persuasive intent is not an accurate fit for describing social group members' promotion of social cohesion by "acting rhetorically upon themselves and others". 反正字数也不够写，总之就是读了Burke突然觉得福柯是多么平易近人啊唉去你大爷的全都是GRE词汇为了看懂subtitle都还要查字典。。。半夜的叹气。。。这门课我真想明年重修一遍，但这也是逃避心理吧。。。

very insightful and interesting

very insightful and interesting

very insightful and interesting

The book offers an explanation of why the traditional/classical notion of rhetoric's persuasive intent is not an accurate fit for describing social group members' promotion of social cohesion by "acting rhetorically upon themselves and others". 反正字数也不够写，总之就是读了Burke突然觉得福柯是多么平易近人啊唉去你大爷的全都是GRE词汇为了看懂subtitle都还要查字典。。。半夜的叹气。。。这门课我真想明年重修一遍，但这也是逃避心理吧。。。