Kenneth Burke
![A grammar of motives Kenneth Burke]( "A grammar of motives Kenneth Burke")
By: Prentice-Hall, Inc
Amazon Marketplace: 2
new & used starting at $14.00
|
Buy at Amazon.com
|
Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Psychology & Counseling -> By Topic -> Reasoning
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Consciousness & Thought
Subjects -> Nonfiction -> Philosophy -> Epistemology
Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 3
Average rating: 4.5 of 5
Kenenth Burke lays out the Dramatistic Pentad 5 out of 5 stars.
29 of 29 people found this review helpful.
"A Grammar of Motives" was published in 1945 as the first volume in a proposed trilogy "On Human Relations" that was never completed; the second volume "A Rhetoric of Motives" was published and their are several pretenders for the third volume, but "A Symbolic of Motives" was never written. Burke's guiding question in this volume is set up in his introduction: "What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?" Burke is concerned with the basic forms of thought in terms of the attribution of motive which he sees as a pivotal part of human interaction present in everything from bits of gossip to systematically elaborated metaphysical structures, although his focus is on more traditional realms such as legal judgment, poetry, fiction, politics, science and the news. The importance of this volume in terms of rhetorical criticism is Burke's development of the dramatistic metaphor/method in general, and the basic terms of analysis with the dramatistic pentad: Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, and Purpose. Ultimately, Burke is interested in the purely internal relationship fo these five terms including "their possibilities of transformation, their range of permutations and combinations." Part One "Way of Placement," establishes the relationship between "Container and Thing Contained," works through all the "Antinomies of Definition" for the key term SUBSTANCE, and then considers the possibilities of "Scope and Reduction." Part Two on "The Philosophic Schools" looks at the elements of the pentad, "Scene," "Agent in General," "Act," "Agency and Purpose." Part Three offers Burke's thoughts "On Dialectic" as the process by which motives are interpreted.
Because the pentad is the Burkeian concept that best lends itself to rhetorical criticism it has been used more often than anything else to be found in his writings. However, this misses the original import of these constructs, which was to get to the basic process of human thought. In this regard "A Grammer of Motives" establishes a foundation for looking at much more than the speeches of politicians. We are reminded by Burke's epigram "ad bellum purificandum" that his goal "is to eliminate the whole world of conflict that can be eliminated through understanding." Burke's work is central to the study of rhetoric and social theory, and while I have always preferred his earlier pre-war "trilogy," his reconstituted critical vocabulary in this volume provides a foundation for reconsidering his earlier works as well as following the progression in "A Rhetoric of Motives."
Editorial Review:
About this book Mr. Burke contributes an introductory and summarizing remark, "What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it? An answer to that question is the subject of this book. The book is concerned with the basic forms of through which, in accordance with the nature of the world as all men necessarily experience it, are exemplified in the attributing of motives. These forms of though can be embodied profoundly or trivially, truthfully or falsely. They are equally present in systematically elaborated or metaphysical structures, in legal judgments, in poetry and fiction, in political and scientific works, in news and in bits of gossip offered at random."
