The Philosophy of Literary Form

Kenneth Burke

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9780520024830
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780520340978
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism Theory
• Index: Literature

From the ForewordThese pieces are selections from work done in the Thirties, a decade so changeable that I at first thought of assembling them under the title, "While Everything Flows."Their primary interest is in speculation on the nature of linguistic, or symbolic, or literary action--and in a search for more precise ways of locating or defining such action.Words are aspects of a much wider communicative context, most of which is not verbal at all. Yet words also have a nature peculiarly their own. And when discussing them as modes of action, we must consider both this nature as words in themselves and the nature they get from the non-verbal scenes that support their acts. I shall be happy if the reader can say of this book that, while always considering words as acts upon a scene, it avoids the excess of environmentalist schools which are usually so eager to trace the relationships between act and scene that they neglect to trace the structure of the act itself.

Table of contents

• INSTEAD OF A FOREWORD
• FOREWORD
• CONTENTS
• THE PHILOSOPHY OF LITERARY FORM
• SEMANTIC AND POETIC MEANING
• THE VIRTUES AND LIMITATIONS OF DEBUNKING
• THE RHETORIC OF HITLER'S "BATTLE"
• THE CALLING OF THE TUNE
• WAR, RESPONSE, AND CONTRADICTION.
• FREUD - AND THE ANALYSIS OF POETRY
• LITERATURE AS EQUIPMENT FOR LIVING
• TWELVE PROPOSITIONS ON THE RELATION BETWEEN ECONOMICS AND PSYCHOLOGY
• THE NATURE OF ART UNDER CAPITALISM
• READING WHILE YOU RUN
• ANTONY IN BEHALF OF THE PLAY
• TRIAL TRANSLATION (FROM TWELFTH NIGHT)
• CALDWELL: MAKER OF GROTESQUES
• THE NEGRO'S PATTERN OF LIFE
• ON MUSICALITY IN VERSE
• GEORGE HERBERT MEAD
• INTELLIGENCE AS A GOOD
• LIBERALISM'S FAMILY TREE
• MONADS-ON THE MAKE
• QUANTITY AND QUALITY
• SEMANTICS IN DEMOTIC
• CORROSIVE WITHOUT CORRECTIVE
• THE CONSTANTS OF SOCIAL RELATIVITY
• THE SECOND STUDY OF MIDDLETOWN
• THE SECOND STUDY OF MIDDLETOWN
• HYPERGELASTICISM EXPOSED
• MAINSPRINGS OF CHARACTER
• EXCEPTIONAL IMPROVISATION
• EXCEPTIONAL BOOK
• PERMANENCE AND CHANGE
• BY ICE FIRE, OR DECAY?
• FEARING'S NEW POEMS
• GROWTH AMONG THE RUINS
• LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
• DIALECTICIAN'S HYMN
• INDEX of Proper Names
• INDEX of Topics