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Content KENNETH BURKE AND RHETORICAL INQUIRY
IN AMERICAN CRITICISM, 1920-1950
by
David Edward Blakesley
A Dissertation Presented to the
.FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
May 1990
Copyright 1990 David Edward Blakesl
UMI Number: D P23145
All rights reserved
IN FO R M A TIO N TO ALL U SER S
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a note will indicate the deletion.
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UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
TH E GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
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E ’
This dissertation, written by
DAVID EDWARD BLAKESLEY
under the direction of h . . . . J . S . . . . Dissertation
Committee, and approved by all its members,
has been presented to and accepted by The
Graduate School, in partial fulfillment of re
quirements for the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Dean of Graduate Studies
Date ...Decerohex..2.QJ..iJ9B9,
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
Chairperson
both "K.B.s" and my parents
Acknowledgement's
My "debt" to Kenneth Burke, of course, is enormous.
This text is testimony to the circumference and scope of his
work. But I also owe thanks to those people who generously
offered their support and encouragement throughout the
dissertation process. Donald C. Freeman proved to be
unwavering in his rigor, and my work is much better thanks
to his "informed skepticism." W. Ross Winterowd's own
impeccable scholarship has been a constant reminder to me of
the complexity of Burke's work. Thomas Gustafson gave my
work direction and purpose. His enthusiasm and warmth have
been, in the genuine tradition of Quintilian, a constant
source of motivation. Ellen Quandahl’s familiarity with
Burke has frequently guided me to interesting aspects of his
work. And James Paul Gee generously lent his time and
interest, for which I am grateful.
j I would also like to acknowledge several others who,
though indirectly involved with my work here, have
nevertheless been present in my thoughts. William Covino
opened my eyes a long time ago, and I am deeply indebted to
him for guiding me to where I am today. "Professor" Joseph
Dane and Betty Bamberg have been friends.
j My wife, Kathey, has always been supportive throughout;
my work here would not have been possible without her.
Finally, I thank my parents, Mike and Pearl, for having
enough faith in me to stand behind me all these years.
XV
TabXe of Contents
Prologue: Alchemic Opportunities vii
Introduction 1
I. The Emerging Portrait of Burke 1
II. The Character of Burke’s Culture 10
III. Kenneth Burke, 1920-1950: An Overview 19
Notes 31
Chapter 1: The Representative Frame of Burke’s
Radiations: Pragmatism, Rhetoric and i
Democracy 33
I. Burke’s Pragmatism 34
II. Burke’s Rhetoric 44 |
III. Burke as Critic of Democracy 54 |
Notes 67 j
Chapter 2: Kenneth Burke and American Criticism j
in the 1920s 68 i
I. The Critical Scenery, 1920-1930: I
The Rise of an American Counter-Culture 69 i
II. Critical Stances: Nationalism,
Impressionism, Aestheticism 81
III. Burke’s Correspondence with Malcolm Cowley 89
IV. Individuating Perspectives: Burke as
Artist and Critic 108
V. Burke’s Fiction in the 1920s 120
VI. Conclusion 129
Notes 131
Chapter 3: Kenneth Burke and American Criticism
in the 1930s 133
I. The Criticial Scenery, 1930-1940 135
V
II. Critical Stances: Marxism and New Criticism 140
III. The Marxist-New Critical Dialectic in
Counter-Statement: The Rhetoric of Form
and Ideology 150
IV. Burke’s Radical Critiques of
Americanism and Communism 169
V. "Sour Grapes Plus": Rhetoric and
the Comic Perspective 176
VI. Conclusion 193
Notes 197
Chapter 4: Kenneth Burke and American Criticism
in the 1940s 198
I. The Critical Scenery, 1940-1950:
Formulating Responses to Hitler 201
II. The Domestic Crisis in Criticism: Burke
and the New Critics 218
III. Rhetorical and Dialectical Maneuvers
in A Grammar of Motives 235
IV. The Reclamation of Rhetoric 246
V. Conclusion 255
Notes 257
Conclusion 258
Notes 267
Works Cited 268
Appendix: Abbreviations 278
The beer is getting poorer. New York has
enveloped itself for me in a haze of ragtime
tunes, a sort of poetry which leads me to a
melancholic happiness. To work in an office is
refuge. Are the trees indeed bare? Who is thi
man Burke?
--Malcolm Cowley,
Letter to Kenneth Burke, 19231
vii
Prologue
Alchemic Opportunities
Malcolm Cowley returns from his exploits in Paris
following World War I to find his world in disarray. New
York, buzzing with jazz and Utopian nightmares, stirs in him
an overwhelming sense of gloom. Confused, dissociated from
life amid the frantic scrambling everywhere around him, he
envisions the "sepulchral city" that Conrad’s Marlow
!
discovers upon returning to London in Heart of Darkness♦ i
I
Even Kenneth Burke, his lifetime friend, has become an
enigma. Cowley feels "melancholic happiness" only at those {
moments when he has the certainty of his craft, writing, to '
guide him to that alchemic moment whereby the sepulchral
city may be transformed from a region of dread into an act
of creation.
Who jjs this man Burke? The enormous volume of
criticism directed Burke’s way, our "scene," has become
unreal and disorienting--the narrative of battles neither
lost nor won but nevertheless destined to determine our
assessment of his accomplishments, his stature as a uniquely
American critic, and of the pragmatic possibilities
liberated by his view of criticism as the agency of
cooperative and competitive inquiry. As Burke’s influence
spreads throughout academic disciplines and explications of
his work multiply, writing about him becomes difficult not
only because one feels the need to discover some as yet
I
unnoticed angle, but also because with time, such figures
become the focus of so many different discourses that
"Burke," the agent of an incredibly diverse critical corpus,'
begins to signify interminably, raising countless
associations. Numerous critical reappraisals have already
■ been devoted to "representing," "entitling," or identifying
him.2 To make things even more complicated, "Any concrete
I
(discourse," as Mikhail Bakhtin puts it, ". . . finds the
t
object at which it was directed already as it were overlain
jwith qualifications, open to dispute, charged with value,
^enveloped in an obscuring mist" (276). Burke’s critics now (
face the daunting task of addressing the question "Who is
I
I
!this man Burke?" while sorting through the many divergent I
i !
|"reappraisals" of his writing to discover what makes his
radical idiosyncrasy worth sustained discussion and !
I
elaboration. I
( i
I What Burke’s detractors find troubling and his allies
I . »
ifind enticing about his work is his penchant for pursuing |
the tangential, for glancing "down the side streets" rather
than "up and down the avenue" (ATH x). In Burke, as j
demonstrated both by his own writings and by those that make
i
him their subject, we have in his terms, not "gridlock" but
"counter-gridlock" (ATH 398; 1984 Afterword). That is, his
work invites us to radiate outward, to proceed "every which
j
way" (ATH 398). Wherever there exist such possibilities for:
I |
open-ended inquiry there will be those who balk, people who I
! I
i ;
cite the "integrity" of disciplinary thinking and the need J
to preserve linear, rationalistic discourse.3
That Burke’s critics--whether opposed or co-
conspirators--disagree over the magnitude of his
accomplishment should not be surprising given the penchant
these days for meta-critical polemics. His affiliations
i
with and anticipation of many modern critical theories have
already been the subject of many articles attempting to
defend or dismiss him. Unfortunately, attempts to establish
Burke’s presence as a force in American criticism have too
often assumed the character of those nationalistic pleas
I
that mark our entrance into wars. To turn the debate in a
;new direction, perhaps we need to reconsider whether
"identifying" Burke by reading him thematically is the best j
i
way to proceed. (We could, for instance, spend considerable
time explicating his anticipation of the absence/presence
!
dichotomy espoused in deconstruction.4) But as Ellen
i , !
Quandahl has recently pointed out, mapping Burke s *
i 1
affiliations with contemporary theory requires that we read
him thematically, which can offer more philosophical ,
!
discussions of Burkean principles than previously, but these
■are essentially defensive moves, attempts "claiming that the!
i |
Burke we have known for years both precedes and supersedes
|
what the fancy critics are doing in language that, for all
I
its authority, is impossibly abstract" (115). Our study of j
iBurke’s writing has clearly progressed beyond the need for j
! !
epideictic rhetoric. To argue Burke’s right to fame is akin|
to what Lewis Lapham has identified as a form of
"contemporary paganism" whereby we assign true elements of
the divine to figures in order to "ease the pain of doubt
and hold at bay the fear of change" (8). (Ironically, as
David Damrosch has written, "the essence of logology is the
perception that anything that can be said about God can also
be said about Kenneth Burke" (224).)
We might renew our reading of Burke by first
recognizing that identification, when viewed as the act of
recognizing things by naming and classifying their
properties, is a metaphysical act, a type of specious,
quasi-mystical theologism that stabilizes the object of
linquiry for the sake of regulating or evaluating human
1 i
action. As Burke himself points out, identifying something 1
in terms of its properties is metaphysical because it
! !
organizes "man’s moral growth" through "properties in goods,
i
in services, in position or status, in citizenship, in
reputation, in acquaintanceship and love" (RM 24). Problems
;arise--the kind that characterize the sharp differences I
among Burke’s commentators— because people tend to disagree j
I xi
|over which properties constitute "good" (and moral)
jcriticism. The critical quandary over Burke’s
j"contribution" results from attempts to identify his
' t
essential properties, the, "Kenneth Burke" or the Burke-ness |
; i
of Burke. Such a project is in the grand style of
i
metaphysics, "which brings its doctrines to a head in some i
over-all title, a word for being in general (GM xxii).
Metaphysical identification is paradoxical because it leads
to "ambiguities of substance" (RM 21). That is, while an
individual is identified with scenes or with other people,
he or she at the same time remains unique, "an individual j
locus of motives" (RM 21). The given subject both is and is
not the same as the character with which and by which it is
identified (GM 21ff). In asking "Who is this man Burke?" j
i *
'and by proceeding to formulate answers based upon modern
conceptions of what constitutes good criticism, we
■inevitably confront ambiguities of substance. We find
; I
jourselves having a choice of whether to pivot upon such j
J :
■ambiguity for the sake of establishing once and for all
j
,Burke’s achievement (on our terms), or— and this is the
i
approach I will elaborate in the chapters to follow— of
i
[recognizing the alchemic opportunities for creating
^substantially new "Burkes" from the primary material— i.e.,
< i
terminologies and attitudes in their historical specificity-
i
-that he has left behind but that few studies have paused toi
discuss. As William H. Rueckert has nicely demonstrated, j
j ---------------------- xil
|there are indeed many Kenneth Burkes.5 Many remain in that
I
undiscovered country where Burke engages the philosophical
issues of his times in reviews, letters, colloquia, critical
polemics, and counter-statements.
Histories of criticism often ignore the public and j
isocial lives of critics in the interest of presenting theory
i !
in its purest form, as a method only, without the i
'complications or distractions of individual personalities or
’ social contexts. Hence, the problem of reading and writing
about Burke. As Hayden White puts it,
Burke’s work remains for many too richly personal-
-in a way that, for example, Frye’s or Richards*
work is not— to be grasped as a whole. There is
I something densely autobiographical in everything
i he has written, so that any effort to come to
terms with his work requires that we come to terms
J with the man who made it. (Representing Kenneth
Burke vii-viii).
Burke wrote and theorized in a cultural scene that had an
ienormous impact on the character of his work— whether we
Idiscuss it as a personal achievement or as a contribution to
; I
i
critical theory. His critical formulations have their |
grounds in the social conditions that circumscribe his work.1
j At times when criticism suffers its own identity j
Jcrisis, we must enlist new terminologies to identify j
l t
jalternative perspectives, such as Burke’s, and adopt !
f
[attitudes that can liberate us from the desire to establish
i (
!his reputation. Such alternatives have been proposed by
I ‘
critics who recognize that the tendency to identify critics !
jusing the extant criteria for inclusion in a discipline’s
list of "critics who count" is a kind of reductionist
I
{metaphysics, the ideals of which are presumed to be stable
!truths. Clifford Geertz points out in "Blurred Genres: The
i
iRef iguration of Social Thought" (1983) that the difficulty
we have today of identifying particular critics by genre is
a phenomenon general enough and distinctive enough
to suggest that what we are seeing is not just
another redrawing of the cultural map--the moving
of a few disputed borders, the marking of some
more picturesque mountain lakes--but an alteration
of the principle of mapping. Something is
happening to the way we think about the way we
think. (20)
{The principle of mapping Geertz refers to derives from a
"democratical temper" that may lead us toward a richer view
of the inter-textuality and inter-disciplinary nature of
critical discourse (20). Geertz uses the drama analogy to
I
argue that criticism ought to unpack "performed meaning"
(29). In other words, critical practice is social action,
the implications of which transcend the barriers of
{disciplinary concerns. Like all writing, criticism is an
j
act, a performance, the meaning of which is socially
constituted and socially derived. And to read Burke j
1 I
Icontextually, we need to study the "patterns of terms in and|
I
lamong texts, engaging in interpretation and frequently
I ■
i
revealing the ideological motives lurking in terms which !
seem to cover them over" (Quandahl 122).
XXV
j I
! The quandary posed by our compulsion to identify
|
critics and their practice poses great difficulties for
1
histories of criticism. Addressing them demands that we
consider identification a rhetorical practice, one that
.involves studying and clarifying, as Burke puts it, the
"resources of ambiguity" (GM xix) (sets of terms in their
radical specificity), then transforming this ambiguity into
new distinctions that do not necessarily replace previous
formulations, but act as further inferences and implications
'with which we can move toward well-rounded discussions of
our subject. Burke’s representative anecdote for this
process is an alembic of means, of continuous purification:
Distinctions, we might say, arise out of a great
central moltenness, where all is merged. They
have been thrown from a liquid center to the
surface, where they have congealed. Let one of
these crusted distinctions return to its source,
; and in this alchemic center it may be remade,
again becoming molten liquid, and may enter into
new combinations, whereat it may be again thrown
forth as a new crust, a different distinction. So
j that A may become non-A. But not merely by a leap
I from one state to the other. Rather, we must takej
A back into the ground of its existence, the j
logical substance that is its causal ancestor, and
on to a point where it is consubstantial with non-;
j A; then we may return, this time emerging with
! non-A instead. (GM xix). '
i
■We have at the outset of any investigation into an author’s
work multiple leads to follow. Countless distinctions have
i
lalready been made concerning Burke’s identity, his primary
concerns, the most usable aspects of his thought, how best
to read him, and so on. Without contesting the usefulness j
jof making such distinctions, I want instead to return these |
["congealed" distinctions to their alchemic center, to the
I
I
jCritical mass, so to speak, that consists of the multiple
1
I voices of Burke’s past contesting for an audience in the
1 j
present. '
My introduction will detail more precisely which of
[these "voices" I intend to pursue to their "grounds of
existence," but for the sake of illustrating what alchemic
opportunities exist in our study of Burke, a brief example
may be helpful. In 1936, Burke participated in a symposium
entitled "What Is Americanism?" in the pages of Partisan
Review and Anvil. the two most popular Marxist journals of ;
the late 1930s and 1940s. Other participants included i
^Theodore Dreiser, Waldo Frank, William Carlos Williams, and
Joseph Freeman. The editors of the journal hoped for a
pluralistic account of the role of Marxism in the American !
i
'tradition. i
Burke’s own penchant for pluralism has been well j
documented.6 But many of these discussions consider his
pluralism intra-textually, that is, as his method of
generating alternative perspectives, diachronically, from j
1 I
, his previous formulations. It is also possible to view [
I
|Burke’s pluralism synchronically, as the coherent philosophy
enacted throughout the entirety of his work.7 Yet another ;
i j
[approach is possible. Staging a particular Burkean act,
i I
like that occurring in the "What Is Americanism?" symposium,!
xvi
\
!we might also look at his work paradigmatically, as I
i
i
intricately contextual and pluralistic with respect to the |
"centers" (the positions of the other speakers) from which
it radiates. My premise is that Burke’s counter-statements j
I
jhave their direct counterparts in the discourse of his ;
I |
jcontemporaries. We cannot understand his critical acts or I
l
terminological displacements without investigating their
scenic grounds. The "What Is Americanism" symposium shows
Burke playing his role as pragmatist, the critic’s critic,
:in the midst of competing voices, some of whom accept
Western Europe’s hegemonic control over the products of
k
American culture, others asserting the necessity of
identifying the revolutionary literature (through historical
.revisionism) of America’s past. Burke acts as mediator,
attempting to identify the usefulness of alternative
jperspectives. His pragmatic view is that "[i]t is
!’American’ to use anything one feels might be of value in
remedying one’s situation" (10). He does not make counter-I
I
statements merely to be antagonistic because too often a
philosophy tries to prove its value "by what new material it
i
I I
jmust categorically re.iect" (11, Burke’s emphasis). Instead:
<
he seeks to "assimilate" alternative material, a necessary ;
i '
i
'critical move because of the "cult of unity,” which leads
people to reject counter-statements categorically in order i
! . I
to preserve the status quo. Burke’s maneuvers in his
:contribution to the symposium demonstrate his extreme
(distrust of either/or, us/them polemics.
Knowledge, as a remedy for a given situation, is the !
i
result of dialogic interaction, not of categorical \
i
rejection. In "Rhetoric--01d and New" (1950) Burke i
1 I
! I
[formalizes the epistemological basis of this model and j
I
lidentifies himself as one rhetorician in the ongoing I
conversation of history:
A rhetorician, I take it, is like one voice in a
dialogue. Put several such voices together, with
each voicing its own special assertion, let them
act upon one another in co-operative competition,
and you get a dialectic that, properly developed,
j can lead to views transcending the limitations of
! each. (63)
i
I
Addressing the question Cowley first put forward in 1923
I
requires that we return to the spirited dialogues Burke has
( so persistently stimulated throughout his career as a critic'
i I
of the American scene.
Notes
1. Malcolm Cowley, letter to Kenneth Burke. (SC Nov. 8 1923).
2. Two studies using such terms are Hayden White and
Margaret Brose, eds. Representing Kenneth Burke (1982); and
Rosalind J. Gabin, "Entitling Kenneth Burke" (1987). j
i i
I !
3. A brief sampling of the fluctuating responses to 1
Burke’s work demonstrates the grave differences among those ;
who have previously sought to characterize his writing.
Wendell V. Harris recalls in his 1988 contribution to the
Sewanee Review’s "Critics Who Made Us" series that "What
Burke was about was not always clear. Whatever it was was I
not easily convertible into coin of the (New Critical)
realm" (452). To Harris and his companions in graduate
school in the 1950s, Burke was a mystery worth
investigating, but someone "only a little less formidable
than the Formalists, Cyrillic alphabet and all" (452). From
Grant Webster we get a negative appraisal: "He seems best
regarded . . . as an old-time American crank inventor who
might have been Edison except that his work lacks any
relation to reality outside his own mind" (Republic of
Letters 175). From Ren£ Wellek we hear the objection of a
logical positivist: "In Burke extremes meet easily. All
distinctions fall. The laws of evidence have ceased to
function. He moves in a self-created verbal universe where
everything may mean everything else" (History of Literary
Criticism 256). Finally, Brian Vickers dismisses Burke as
entirely unwieldy because of the multiple directions a study
of his writings might take. In his recent article, "The
Atrophy of Rhetoric, Vico to de Man" (1988), Vickers ,
identifies Burke’s "concerns" as "free wheeling, allusive,
unhistorical philosophizing, a system that rearranges the t
components of classical rhetoric so idiosyncratically as to i
be virtually unusable" (28). To Webster, Wellek, and i
Vickers, Burke is a solipsist, someone moving in directions j
that few critics can, or ought, to follow. !
Despite such cautionary words, Burke’s writings have
enlisted a formidable group of commentators— critics,
sociologists, and anthropologists who have for various
reasons recognized that Burke’s "radiations" have taken him
into regions of inquiry well before such modes of thinking
Were either popular or desirable. Such people as William
Rueckert, Stanley Edgar Hyman, Wayne Booth, Clifford Geertz,
Hugh Duncan, Francis Fergusson, Harold Bloom, Hayden White,
Frank Lentricchia, Geoffrey Hartman, Edward Said, W. Ross J
Winterowd, Rene Girard, William Covino, the list goes on . .j
. have identified Burke as a pioneer of structuralism,
archetypal criticism, psychoanalytic criticism, ___
xix!
deconstruction, post-structuralism, post-modernism, and
critical pluralism. The praise of Burke and the recognition
of his accomplishments is frequent and often unqualified
lamong some of the most prominent critics of our time.
4. Burke’s discussions of the ambiguity of substance in A
Grammar of Motives. perspective by incongruity in Permanence
' and Change. and symbols of authority in Attitudes toward
History each anticipate deconstruction’s concern for the
hierarchical oppositions suggested by a particular text.
For a thorough account of Burke’s relations with Yale
deconstructionists, see Lewis W. Clayton, "Identifications
and Divisions: Kenneth Burke and the Yale Critics" (1986). !
5. "Some of the Many Kenneth Burkes." j
6. See, for instance, the chapter on Burke in Wayne Booth’s
Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism.
|7. Rueckert studies Burke’s dramatism "diachronically" in
Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations (1963).
Greig E. Henderson approaches Burke synchronically,
examining Burke’s work in contexts beyond its original scope
in Kenneth Burke: Literature and Language as Symbolic Action
i(1988).
1
X ntroduction
Burkology, Burkeranto, Burkitis, Burkarama— however we i
! I
identify Kenneth Burke’s project by name, we must make some j
account of the intensely personal and historically situated
character of his work as a rhetorician.1 As a gesture I
i
toward such an end, the chapters ahead will explore Burke’s j
scrambling in the "human barnyard" of criticism (RM 23) with
i
an eye for representative situations in which various
perspectives on his "acts" come into play. Each chapter !
I
|begins by placing these situations within an immediate j
i
textual and cultural landscape. The ensuing discussions j
i
explicate these representative situations in their local
circumstances, "staging" critical moments in Burke’s career
;to spotlight the diverse strategies he employs during the
i
tumultuous years between the two World Wars.2
I. The Emerging Portrait of Burke
The portrait that emerges from a study of "Kenneth
Burke and Rhetorical Inquiry in American Criticism, 1920-
1950" has too many dimensions to summarize adequately. The
Lord’s "But-it’s-more-complicated-than-that" rejoinder to
Satan in Burke’s "Prologue in Heaven" (RR) reminds us of thei
i
dangers of atomistic vocabularies that would treat of a
jwider circumference in terms of a narrower one.3 We
'acknowledge, with Burke, that "any characterization of any
I
sort is a reduction" (GM 96). We can only hope that the
resulting portrait does some justice to the complexity of I
t
i
our subject.
The portrait of Burke that coalesces when we study his
l"text milieu"4 has five important aspects that I want to
i
identify here. First, it is the portrait of a critic who
jreclaims the humane and politically-vested interests of
rhetorical inquiry despite the widespread distrust of
I
;"rhetoric" among twentieth-century literary critics. At a
i
moment in American intellectual history when rhetoric, as a
i
practical art, is "universally despised" (Burke CWO ix),
Burke comes along to assert that a rhetorical motive "is
often present where it is not usually recognized or thought !
ito belong" (RM xiii). And rhetorical inquiry naturally
i ;
i
arises because we are "symbol-using animals" (LASA 3). "All
i ;
lliving things are critics," he writes in 1935, and the
i
/'experimental, speculative technique made available by
|
jspeech would seem to single out the human species as the
■only one possessing an equipment for going beyond the
I
criticism of experience to the criticism of criticism" (PC
< I
5-6). Burke’s remedy for his social situation is rhetorical
I
inquiry, for him the democratic and pluralistic method of j
I 3
entertaining multiple viewpoints in the interest of wresting
control from those regulatory systems of orientation that
would sanction only partisan action.
J
The rhetorical problem for Burke is to demonstrate that
a system of orientation has alternatives, that we can
benefit from recognizing that human relations may be
identified in numerous ways, that in our attempts to endorse1
! I
particular behaviors we often find ourselves neither in
i i
absolute agreement nor absolute disagreement. "[W]e only
deliberate," Aristotle wrote in the Rhetoric, "about things
I
which seem to admit of issuing in two ways" (1357a). To
j i
establish the need for deliberation and to demonstrate the !
I
limitations of any one particular system, Burke turns to
rhetorical inquiry— rhetorica docens. the study of I
! ;
persuasive resources— to identify and elaborate regions of
doubt, instances when neither identification nor division
are absolute. The premise here is that people naturally j
Ifind themselves divided over the grounds for action. For !
I i
linstance, the ideal that people can, or ought, to cooperate j
^ i
I i
"materially" often finds itself frustrated by material I
:
Iconditions themselves (RM 22). We have choices of whether j
to accept the intrinsic value of material cooperation or to.j
! i
reject it by substituting an alternative frame of
I
acceptance. In such situations, we have the "characteristic
i
i
(invitation to rhetoric" (RM 25), Burke writes, because the
1 j
mutual interests of free agents are in conflict; when there
is division and, hence, grounds for deliberation. !
I !
Rhetorical inquiry is directed at these situations,
identifying conflict when and where it exists. Burke’s ]
I
conviction is that identifying differences is requisite to i
understanding that "temptations to strife are implicit in
I
the institutions that condition human relationships" (RM
20). Rhetorical inquiry becomes for Burke an "existential
argument for freedom" (Lentricchia Criticism and Social j
I
Change 162).
| The second aspect of the portrait is Burke’s
/
pragmatism. He is not a pragmatist in the instrumental or [
utilitarian vein typified in John Dewey’s later works or in
the naturalistic vein espoused by Sidney Hook,5 but in his ;
efforts to transcend the limitations of particular frames o f
experience by transforming them to suit particular social
circumstances. Despite the fact that pragmatism has not
been the direct object of much philosophical debate since
I ;
|the 1940s, we find that pluralism, the one stance consistent.
with the pragmatic approach (Crusius 365) is a fundamental ,
i i
'Burkean concern.6 In viewing Burke as an American |
: i
Ipragmatist in the tradition of Charles Saunders Peirce and
William James, we privilege agency— the production of ^
I
alternative critical frameworks in the interest of mediating
1 ,
I
differences. Burke’s pragmatism is one of his
distinguishing features, and until Timothy Crusius’s mention
that it is Burke’s "shrewd reality assessment yoked to j
irespect for getting positive outcomes in the world" (365),
Burke had not been discussed as a pragmatist.
i Pragmatism, informed by the comic attitude that people |
! I
Jare necessarily mistaken, becomes for Burke a means of |
i i
jdemonstrating that pluralistic accounts of human relations
1 i
ban remedy bad situations, such as those encountered when j
I \
philosophical systems are no longer suited to the conditions
they were designed to ameliorate. He also recognizes that !
rhetoric gives the pragmatist the terminology necessary to
discourage the efficiency with which philosophical systems,
including capitalism, vanquish alternative remedies. To
sustain the pragmatic process, we can enlist rhetorical
perspectives on language. And recall that language, in one
i
of Burke's more recent formulations, is "[t]he arbitrary
I
conventional medium of symbolic expression and communication
that is best equipped to discuss itself and all others"
:("Counter-Gridlock" 6). Rhetoric, as a terminology designed
to study the purposive use of language, beckons pragmatists '
t :
to turn its devices on their own solutions and thereby !
perpetuate the process of inquiry through reflexive
analysis.
Third, Burke's efforts to establish a position from
which to investigate the rhetorical dimensions of human
relations is not simply critical posturing. He decides in
i
the early 1920s to become an "agro-bohemian," choosing to j
i
distance himself from the trappings of urban-intellectualism
I 6
I
and "trained incapacity," Thorstein Veblen’s phrase for the
blindnesses that accompany any scheme of orientation, e.g.,
disciplinary practice and the terminologies it enlists to
I
^further its purposes.7 In 1921, Burke, having already
j
■rejected formal academic training, dreamed of returning to
j 1
the rural life: "I smile with my eyes shut in contemplation j
‘ of that joyous retreat lying somewhere just beyond the !
i
I
commuting distance" (SC 108). He bought a farm in the New ,
i |
Jersey countryside in 1922 and has lived there ever since.
On the one hand, living the rural life has always been
Burke’s way of protesting the scheme of orientation
i
supporting capitalism and competitive finance.8 But the
move for Burke was a spiritual relocation as well, allowing
him to see other possibilities in systems of "orientation," 1
i
not to "escape" realities per se, but to facilitate the |
J i
'necessary shift in attitude that must accompany shifts in
I
perspective. Burke might be called one of the "last
I f
|amateurs"— someone opting out of formal academic training atj
la period in history when public intellectuals flocked to ■
college campuses in droves.* He refused to be fully j
^socialized into a culture that had stood for liberalism and j
I !
"rugged individualism" but had succeeded only in creating
corporate bureaucracies of unparalleled and destructive j
efficiency.10 Burke’s move to the country was, in William j
I
■Carlos Williams's words, an existential quest for the
meaning of the local, for universal purposes: "Kenneth Burke
|(and family, very important) found a place out in the
'country where they could live" (The Dial. 1929; rpt. CRKB
17).
The fourth aspect of our portrait of Burke is conveyed i
jby his belief in the democratic possibilities of rhetorical
[inquiry. The rhetoric he proposes is founded upon a
i
democratic ideal that would view dissent and the
i i
i
[parliamentary expression of doubt as positive invitations to;
speculation. As he puts it in his poem, "Dialectician’s
Hymn," "may we have neither the mania of the One/ Nor the (
‘ delirium of the Many--/ But both the Union and the ‘
Diversity" (PLF 450). In Counter-Statement Burke argues
I
that "[djemocracy is coming into disrepute among the j
i
practical on the grounds of its ’inefficiency*" (114). He j
,feels, however, that inefficiency is democracy’s chief
I f
virtue. As an attitude, it means "government by *
(interference, by distrust" (CS 119). A democratic rhetoric i
I t
iwould discourage "bureaucratization of the imaginative," ;
I t
! :
Burke’s phrase in Attitudes toward History for the process \
i
of history whereby one possibility among many is stressed in-
the interest of efficiency. A democratic rhetoric would
f
discourage runaway industrialism and the monopolist who j
I !
would silence all voices but one. In critical theory, a I
; }
i
democratic rhetoric is needed to combat the extremes of
; I
positivism and scientism, which over-emphasize efficient ^
'solutions and establish ideals that restrict freedom. In ^
1985 Burke explains both his vision of democracy and
explains the basis of his life-long critique of Marxism:
j my occupational psychosis as a critic is such that'
| I spontaneously associate democracy with freedom !
of criticism. In fact, my basic personal j
j disagreement with Marxism has been that, tough and
accurate as his criticism of capitalism was,
Marx’s dialectic was so set up that communism was
ideal, hence by sheer definition beyond criticismJ
! ("In Haste" 374)
t
Burke challenges authoritative (or totalitarian) discourse
I
I i
.because it suppresses the critical faculty enabled by
i
language, that characteristic human capacity for questioning
!our interpretations, whether they be political, literary, or
{otherwise. 1
I
I The fifth aspect of our portrait of Burke derives from
his efforts to broaden our conception of "Americanism" and
'the role of literature and criticism in establishing
Inational identity. Literature, as Burke sees it, offers us
ithe best opportunity to study human attempts to come to
jterms with both personal and social conflict. The "art-for-^
I
jart’s-sake" argument of the aesthetic movement during the
i i
i
early years of this century had devalued the potential
literary and critical contributions to social change.
.However, "[t]he ultimate metaphor for discussing the j
juniverse and man’s relation to it," Burke asserts, "must be
jthe poetic or dramatic metaphor" (PC 263). Though
^rhetorical inquiry need not be confined to any special
< I
science, as Aristotle himself argued (Rhetoric 1354a), Burke
directs it at literature and criticism because it is in his
|
jview a strategy for framing experience publicly. Despite
!the fact that he has been enormously influential in
i !
' I
extending the range of rhetoric across the disciplines, as !
: i
/ * • !
Herbert W. Simons points out ( Kenneth Burke and the i
i !
Rhetoric of the Human Sciences” 1989), Burke’s predilection ;
I
in the 1920s is for literature, its criticism, and the :
' I
I ‘
^cultural contributions of both.
! >
i
Responding to the tendency to evaluate American
1
I
literature by its capacity for expressing regional
character,11 Burke directs much of his writing, as do many
socialists in the 1930s, to the question of Americanism.
The debates were over whether there were prospects for
Inducing social change through the devices of revolutionary
literature. The view Burke expresses in his 1941 article
"Americanism" is representative of his stance:
j I feel that it devolves, as never before upon j
| those who are earnestly concerned with the arts ofi
education and expression, in contrast with the |
mere mercenary bands that make up too much of the i
I publicity priesthood, to equate patriotism and j
1 Americanism with an artistic and critical idiom !
j much more penetrating than that which the business!
j leader seems content with. (3) !
jBurke aW eS that neither reaction^ nor regionallsm can j
distinguish American literature and criticism. Nor should
Americanism be the possession of "one occupational class"
("Americanism" 2), especially of the business class. Burke ;
wants to expand reductive economic interpretations of i
Americanism to include the voices of many identities, giving
; i
,full consideration not just to Marx, for instance, but to
■
the alternatives provided us by other systems of meaning
j(rhetoric, Freudianism, pragmatism, etc.)* We should j
notice, he argues, that those thinkers who have helped shape!
lur national identity had this feature in common: "The fact |
' I
that many of them so naturally incorporated foreign material
|in their thinking whenever they found such material
serviceable" ("What Is Americanism" 11; Burke italicizes
I !
this sentence in the original). Burke approaches the issue ,
of "Americanism" as a pragmatist, as a rhetorician, as a
bohemian particularly sensitive to the role of scene in
shaping thought, and as a patriot on behalf of democratic
criticism. As a representative act, his engagement with j
I
this issue from the 1920s to the 1950s affords us a
.sharpened appreciation of what makes Burkean criticism
■radically American.
J
I
IX. The Character of Burke * s Culture
1 I
I Our portrait of Burke cannot be complete without some |
account of the scenes that contain his acts. We face at the
loutset, then, a problem that Burke himself repeatedly
j :
[describes. In identifying the relations between a person’s
t
^ideas and the contexts in which they are expressed we face i
what he has called the "inevitable paradox" of contextual j
definition (GM 24). That is, when we locate or place an j
agent in context and attempt to stabilize the relationship
!
between the agent’s ideas and his or her scene, we subject
i
jourselves to charges that we fail to discuss the agent’s
►
intrinsic motives. Burke does not suggest, however, that we!
| }
'dismiss the paradox of contextual definition by avoiding it.i
i j
jOn the contrary, he argues that we need to consider both the'
I
[intrinsic and extrinsic motives governing human action.
jDiscussing Burke’s ideas in their social context helps us
both multiply perspectives on his work and avoid the
limitations of intrinsic definition.
i
In Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations.
i -------------------- -------------- -------- -------- -------------- — ---------------- --------------------------’ i
i
William Rueckert chooses to study Burke intrinsically (i.e.,
I
analytically). Rueckert explicates Burke’s literary theory
and critical practice, intentionally leaving out such
I
matters as the relations between Burke’s work and the
literary and cultural life of his times (3). Rueckert*s
project is to apprehend the "whole coherent system" of .
| i
Burke’s dramatism (5). The problem, Rueckert acknowledges, i
I l
I
;is that "[m]y approach to Burke is so purely intrinsic that j
I
some readers may suppose the book to have been written in a
■historical and theoretical vacuum" (3). Rueckert seeks only!
i j
[the partial "purification" of Burke, leaving it up to future
I
Icommentators to complete the process. (Despite such
I
temperance, however, Rueckert does make the broad, purifying
claim that "[e]verything since the early 1940s has been
written [by Burke] from within [dramatism] and is either an !
application or extension of it. Even the material written
ibefore that date is all best understood as moving in the
I
^direction of dramatism" (vii).) Rueckert's reluctance to
jtackle the difficult task of placing Burke historically and
{theoretically is understandable, especially since extrinsic
I
studies of Burke, as Rueckert conceives them, would require
[minds "attuned like critical seismographs to detect the
'slightest theoretical tremors, and programmed, as it were,
i
jto place each one in the long line of abstractions which
make up the history of literary criticism" (4). Rueckert
shies away from this "history of ideas" approach to Burke
I
not only because it would bring him into regions with which
i
he was unfamiliar or where he felt unqualified, but also
[
because Burke’s own writing seems to undercut the neat
distinctions any history of ideas would require us to make.
I
It would seem hopelessly optimistic to believe that
any one study of Burke could adequately situate his work
‘ historically and culturally. Nevertheless, our desire to
!
elaborate the scene-act, scene-agent, scene-agency, and
i
jscene-purpose ratios has not subsided. Recent work by such
jcritics as Frank Lentricchia (in Criticism and Social
^Change), Timothy Crusius (in "Kenneth Burke’s Auscultation:
i
‘ A "De-Struction" of Marxist Dialectic and Rhetoric"), and
Fredric Jameson (in "The Symbolic Inference . . .") has
helped sketch what a contextual account of Burke’s work
might attempt. Rueckert’s valuable collection, Critical
Responses to Kenneth Burke. 1924-1966. demonstrates to us i
jthe intensity with which Burke’s contemporaries responded to!
i !
his writing. And in the last ten years or so, numerous ;
interviews with Burke have helped us identify what for him j
i i
have been alchemic moments in his public life.12 The |
' i
resources necessary to contextualize Burke’s ideas have j
grown considerably since Rueckert made his decision to study
I
•Burke’s work intrinsically.
‘ Perhaps the best characterization of the relationship
between a critic’s ideas and his times has been made by
Burke himself. His well-known anecdote concerning the
"unending conversation" that is going on at the point in
history when we are born bears repeating because it captures.
the polyphonic nature of our participation in the drama of
human relations:
Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late.
! When you arrive, others have long preceded you,
and they are engaged in a heated discussion, a
discussion too heated for them to pause and tell j
] you exactly what it is about. In fact, the |
| discussion had already begun long before any of
them got there, so that no one present is
I qualified to retrace for you all the steps that
! had gone before. You listen for a while, until
| you decide that you have caught the tenor of the
| argument; then you put in your oar. Someone j
I answers; you answer him; another comes to your
defense; another aligns himself against you, to
either the embarrassment or gratification of your ;
opponent, depending upon the quality of your
ally’s assistance. However, the discussion is
interminable. The hour grows late, you must
depart. And you do depart, with the discussion i
still vigorously in progress. (PLF 110-11)
!We enter Burke’s parlor to find it populated by artists, j
critics, philosophers, historians, and politicians, each of
whom Burke vigorously engages in conversation. They include}
|
such people as Malcolm Cowley, Joel Spingarn, Irving .
Babbitt, Granville Hicks, T.S. Eliot, John Dos Passos, Van
jWyck Brooks, Woodrow Wilson, Cleanth Brooks, John Dewey,
Adolf Hitler, Archibald MacLeish, Ren6 Wellek, Herbert
f
Hoover, Dwight MacDonald, S.I. Hayakawa, Franklin D.
Roosevelt, and many others. Though people like Karl Marx,
William James, Jeremy Bentham, Sigmund Freud, and others
I
have recently departed, their voices still echo in the room.
i
Burke listens attentively, then puts in his oar. He finds
it necessary to transform his ideas as he mingles among the
i
crowd. Part of our task as newcomers to this ongoing ]
conversation is to catch the tenor of the arguments. We j
!
also recognize the necessity of identifying the "context of
situation"--the occasions for the parlor gathering, since
i
much of the conversation is directed its way. Cultural
circumstances enliven some conversations more than others.
In addition, as Burke puts it, the context of situation alsoj
^greatly affects the idiom in which the participants speak,
jand thus, the idiom by which they think (PLF 112).
To characterize the distinguishing features of Burke’s
parlor and the idiom in which he speaks and thinks, we must
raise issues that challenge the sovereignty that any one j
critical perspective has over the means of inquiry. Burke
ispeaks in many voices, and when judged by the idiom of a
I
I
particular discipline, such as literary criticism, he
appears to be an anomaly. Not only does he shift idioms, i
but he resists the rigid distinctions that a disciplinary j
I
history makes when evaluating its past. Because Burke puts 1
| i
|in many different oars, so to speak, and refuses to be fully'
I
socialized into a particular mode of thinking, we find
’ ourselves forced to consider the cultural apparatus that j
:informs our representations of his critical practice.
Lentricchia, arguing from the Marxist perspective, views
Burke as an occasion for a radical critique of disciplinary !
I
Inquiry:
j i
I For more than fifty years Burke— this man without
i tenure, a Ph.D, or even a B.A., who writes books
I that cannot be touched by conventional academic
i definition--has been telling us that the s
conventional division of the humanities, with
literature, philosophy, history, linguistics, and
! social theory each self-enclosed within the
I fortresslike walls of the disciplines, housing
! experts too often ignorant and contemptuous of
I everything outside their respective castles, is
! all, at best, a lie of administrative convenience,:
I and, at worst, a re-enforcement in our j
| institutions of higher education of bourgeois- !
capitalist hegemony. ("Reading History with I
Kenneth Burke” 120)
i ■
'Lentricchia’s condemnation of those who do not accept Burke
i
as a literary critic is an extreme position. Few critics,
|if any, would identify themselves as mechanisms of
!
"bourgeois-capitalist hegemony." Yet there has always been
some resistance to the attitude Burke would have us assume,
and the source of this resistance can be discovered, I
1 16
I
think, in the urge to silence alternative voices for the
!
sake of preserving the autonomy of one’s critical practice.
Culture is something that people enact, not something
people possess. When we say someone has been "enculturated"
or "socialized" we mean that he or she has adopted the
complex set of behaviors, attitudes, and purposes that have
i
been formally sanctioned--by decree, by law, or by practice-
-to be desirable in a particular social setting. In Edward
Said’s terms, culture is "an environment, process, and
hegemony in which individuals (in their private
circumstances) and their works are embedded as well as
overseen at the top by a superstructure and at the base by a
i
whole series of methodological attitudes" (8). The
"superstructure" Said speaks of, which is akin to
Lentricchia’s "castle," shapes behavior by regulating it
with ethical, moral, even legal sanctions or prohibitions.
Methodological attitudes derive in large part from these
standards. Culture’s power is manifest in its drive to
maintain such attitudes, and this power assumes many
J
characters. As Said puts it,
[I]n the transmission and persistence of culture
there is a continual process of reinforcement, by
I which the hegemonic culture will add to itself the
prerogatives given it by its sense of national
identity, its power as an implement, ally, or
branch of the state, its rightness, its exterior
forms and assertions of itself: and most
important, by its vindicated power as a victor
over everything not itself. (14)
As we will see, in the 1930s much of Burke’s discussion of
jAmerican culture addresses the issue of national identity,
which he believed Hitler had exploited rhetorically.
^Criticism, of course, whether or not it is directed at
I
jculture, operates within culture as a set of attitudes that
normally function, though not always, as an expression or
i
localized manifestation of culture’s hegemony. Culture
filters into critical discourse and into the language of the
individual critic in a process Bakhtin has called
'"heteroglossia": "In all areas of life and ideological
activity, our speech is filled to overflowing with other
people’s words, which are transmitted with highly varied
degrees of impartiality" (Dialogic Imagination 337). Our
words are necessarily the words of others.
1 The relation between culture and criticism is
synecdochic. Scholarship of any kind is a representation of
culture, and as such we can expect to see the cultural
i
k
process at work within a discipline. Criticism may re-shape
I
^cultural hegemony, for good or ill, depending upon its
i
[degree of opposition and the number of followers it enlists
i
jin its cause. (Lentricchia, I think, would agree, since his
marginalized position does, by virtue of its didacticism,
attempt to break free of disciplinary barriers in order to
rebuild them in a "better" way.) For Said, criticism is
most useful when it is "oppositional": "In its suspicion of
totalizing concepts, in its discontent with reified objects,
18
in its impatience with guilds, special interests,
imperialized fiefdoms, and orthodox habits of mind,
i
jcriticism is most itself" (29). Criticism may accompany
certain cultural conditions, but it need not be subservient
i
jto them or be caused by them.
j The culture of criticism is perhaps best represented in
the term "discipline." "Culture also designates a
i
boundary," Said writes, "by which the concepts of what is
'extrinsic or intrinsic come into forceful play" (9). This
I
boundary is commonly called "the discipline," and it is the
i
primary agency of criticism’s self-identifying practice, an
effort to establish itself as a socially responsible
activity. A discipline declares its sovereignty not only by
identifying the uniqueness of its subject matter, but also
by formulating a set of procedures that differentiates it
from alternative fields. To maintain its identity, it
privileges certain forms of discourse, which operate, in
Michel Foucault’s terms, as "machineries of power" and as
i
|the generating force behind the kind of exclusion Said says '
i
divides extrinsic from intrinsic disciplinary practices. ;
! i
'These forms of discourse assume a character regulated by the
‘ I
jdiscipline’s approved (and repeatedly practiced) methods of
'argument, the attitudes informing them, and the laws of
evidence that determine descriptive and explanatory
adequacy.
19
III. Kenneth Burke. 1920-1950: An Overview
Each of the chapters ahead assumes that to understand
Burke’s work we need to know something about the context-- i
Ithe dialectical counterparts in American culture and |
^criticism— that gave his writing social and personal !
significance. Chapter I is an overview that probes in {
1 i
greater depth the interrelations among the features of
Burke’s thought that focus the discussions in subsequent
chapters. First, I place Burke’s "criticism of criticism"
in the context of American pragmatism, and identify Burke’s ;
mentor as William James, the man whom Burke credits for
preferring the "assymmetry of ’pluralism,’" despite the fact
that the doctrine "outraged his form-loving colleagues" (ATH
|6). Second, I consider in some detail Burke’s j
conceptualization of rhetorical inquiry itself, including
.its dependence upon the Aristotelian view of rhetoric as the
^invention and study of persuasive resources. Third, I
discuss Burke’s association of democracy with the kind of j
critical freedom liberated by a rhetorical, pragmatic frame 1
of acceptance. Burke’s view of democratic inquiry stands as
a counter-statement directed to the progressive liberalism
j i
|of American capitalism and designed to encourage what
j
Benjamin Barber has recently described as "strong democracy",
(Strong. Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age,
2
1984). Throughout this chapter, I focus upon the ways in
which Burke applies his conceptions of pragmatism, rhetoric,.
and democracy to the issue of Americanism, culminating in
I
his endorsement of "bohemianism" This overview then serves
f
I
as the generating set of principles for the discussions in
the next three chapters.
I
1 Chapter II focuses on Burke’s work during the 1920s.
I
This chapter, like those to follow, begins by identifying
the historical context to which Burke and his fellow critics
reacted. The political climate of the 1920s was shadowed,
!
of course, by the lingering effects of World War I. The
defeat of Woodrow Wilson's League of Nations covenant in
I
>1919, the "Red Scare" of that same year, and the wave of
Isolationism following the war accelerated and intensified
forces of conformity and reaction throughout the 1920s. As
Maldwyn A. Jones puts it, "the eclipse of Progressivism, the
i 1
recrudescence of nativism, the technological revolution,
^and] the challenges to the existing social and moral order"
I
1(432) each contributed to a widespread mood of
^disillusionment. At the outset of the 1920s, Burke had j
Jalready entered public life by way of Greenwich Village, a
{
iretreat for artists and intellectuals whose mood had been !
■profoundly affected by these shifts in attitude. The
j
jVillage was an enclave of new-Bohemians who had discovered
I
|solace in sharing their disillusionment with the like-minded
and had actively criticized--in works like Harold Stearns’s :
Civilization in the United States (1921)— the quality of
intellectual life fostered by American institutions. By !
1921 Burke had already dropped out of Columbia, choosing to
live the life of the auto-didact in that "place beyond
j
commuting distance."
i
I
| Much critical debate during the 1920s focused on the
role of literature and criticism in the ongoing struggle to
stabilize national identity. In articles like "Chicago and
Our National Gesture," correspondence with Malcolm Cowley,
poetry, and fiction, Burke countered the then popular view
among literary and cultural critics, such as Joel Spingarn
and Van Wyck Brooks, that American literature ought to
express regional character. As Burke saw it, the American
artist's responsibility was to create new forms of
expression— alternatives to realism, which he felt turned
writers into the slaves of a tradition that had exhausted
its capacity for liberating new insight. He begins to
develop in 1922 a concept of the psychology of form and
information that nine years later evolves into the multi
dimensional "Lexicon Rhetoricae"— a work that, when ‘
I
evaluated in the context of the 1920s debates over national
|
^identity, becomes an assertion of artistic and critical
I I
ifreedom. Burke's aim was, as Timothy Crusius has pointed )
I
I I
jout, to unite the opposing concepts of the psychology of
information and the psychology of form into "polarities
]
within a union of opposites" (359, Crusius's emphasis).
’ With the devices of rhetorical inquiry and the I
pragmatist’s concern for "better" solutions, Burke 1
^demonstrated even at this early stage in his career that
i
Jappeals for national, or regional, forms of expression were
jisolationist and anti-democratic. So he proposes a system
:
rof aesthetics that would recognize the contributions of
i
jtraditional literary forms, including European ones, while
t
moving beyond them to create the potential for alternative <
means. Burke’s fiction in the 1920s follows a similar
i
;course of development. Early in his career, he imitated
[Flaubertian realism in "The White Oxen," despite the fact
that such a form had become commonplace. By 1924 he had
written "Prince Llan," a surreal and complex tale that
'abandons the syllogistic form of realism and adopts what
t
Burke would later describe as "qualitative progression" (CS
124), a method of development that could be used to
|highlight the appeal of form as form, which Burke began to
see by the end of the 1920s as one of the forgotten (and
[positive) functions of rhetoric. His fiction in the 1920s
I i
|demonstrates the aesthetic possibilities liberated by a j
;union of previously conflicting means, the psychology of j
'information and the psychology of form.
Chapter III moves to Burke’s work in the 1930s. At the!
I j
[outset of the 1930s, the cultural, political, and critical ;
[scene is haunted by the specter of the Depression. The
country’s economic prosperity prior to October 1929, fueled !
by a consumption ethic and the tenets of Hoover’s "rugged j
individualism," had led to over-speculation and a "get-rich-
quick" atmosphere (Jones 454). When signs that all was not |
!
well with the nation’s economy began to appear in September j
1929, speculators scrambled to liquidate their holdings, and
by October the stock market had collapsed. The economic
effects of the Depression were devastating on many fronts.
jThe reluctance of the Hoover Administration to improve j
social conditions with federal assistance, depending instead
upon volunteerism and local governments for relief, was
:particularly disheartening, especially in light of the
[Administration’s numerous bank and corporate bail-outs.
Many critics, Burke among them, underwent significant
I
[shifts in attitude as a consequence of these social
conditions. Critical debates in the 1930s were fought
vigorously on many fronts. On the heels of the Depression, j
one group of critics, including people like Granville Hicks,
|Joseph Freeman, and Michael Gold, launched campaigns against
bourgeois-capitalist literature because it oiled the
bureaucratic machinery that caused the economic and
psychological alienation from which many Americans suffered.
Compelled to define criticism as responsible social action, t
I
I
these critics directed much of their attention to the '
Soviets and their "experiment" because it appeared they had j
dealt with the "capitalist problem" progressively. Much
!literary criticism was devoted to explicating the
•proletarian and revolutionary tradition in American
literature, which had always been present but had been
silenced by capitalist hegemony. Socialist critics believedj
that the aesthetic approach toward criticism prevalent in
I
ithe 1920s had implicitly supported the liberal and
individualist ideology of capitalism by promoting the "art- \
I
|for-art’s-sake" view, an act that seemingly repressed
I
literature’s sociopolitical content.
Another group of critics emerged concomitantly with the
socialist critics, though this group continued to foreground
I
(literature’s aesthetic dimension. These critics— some of
\
(them identifying themselves as humanists (e.g., Irving
j
Babbitt), others as formalists (e.g., Allen Tate)--developed
procedures for discussing the writer’s imaginative
transformation of cultural material into poetic forms.
Their aim was to elaborate the artistic and formal
manipulation of experience rather than to validate a
political agenda or to initiate social change.
\ (
Burke affiliates himself with both movements, bent upon
(demonstrating the limitations and potentialities of both the
I i
^socialist and "emergent" New Critical stances. j
i
Counter-Statement appears in 1931, and a debate ensues |
] l
jbetween Burke and Granville Hicks over the socialist and 1
j
'aesthetic dimensions of Burke’s approach. Hicks accuses
l
jBurke of being too formalist. Burke rejoins that Counter-
Statement in effect unites aesthetics with sociological
criticism. The Burke-Hicks exchange makes it clear that (
I
I
Counter-Statement does, as Burke intended, make "the nature 1
jof a controversy more definite" (CS ix) and throws into j
i
jrelief the dilemma that many critics faced in their
conversion from aesthetics to Marxism. Burke enlists the
help of Gustave Flaubert, Remy de Gourmont, and Walter Pater
in an attempt to synthesize a critical method from a
; ;
jdiaologic representation of the competing perspectives of 1
formalism and Marxism. To demonstrate the subtleties of
Burke’s own conversion from the aesthetic to the socialist-
I
aesthetic, I trace his efforts to elaborate the dependence
of form (as produced and received) upon ideology.
i 1
In the middle 1930s, Burke becomes a central figure in
the critical debate over the potential contributions of
Marxism to American literary and cultural criticism. His
article "My Approach to Communism" (1934), his speech at the|
First American Writers Congress (1935), and his
participation in the "What is Americanism?" colloquium
I
(1936) show how profoundly Burke was influenced in his
jthinking by the "maximum insecurity" or "bewilderment of ;
jexpectation" promoted by capitalism ("My Approach to j
jcommunism" 20). In his effort to assess the situation
I
pragmatically, he argues that revolutionary rhetoric must t
|draw its symbols from "middle-class values" ("Revolutionary
Symbolism in America" 269), a call for action that
i i
recognizes the persuasiveness of capitalist motives even as '
it seeks to transplant them to a better system. ,
I I
| Burke writes Permanence and Change and Attitudes toward;
I
I :
History during the middle 1930s. My focus in discussing ,
i j
'these two books will be on Burke's efforts to elaborate the j
I
j i
iconcept of "perspective by incongruity." In addition, i
! i
iBurke' s review of John Dewey’s The Quest for Certainty in j
| !
|1930 shows how influential Dewey was in leading Burke I
1 i
to recognize the value of pragmatism in exposing the
limitations of any one metaphysical or philosophic
orientation. Pursued and sustained with resolute single-
mindedness, such "imaginative" conceptions of human
relations lead to "trained incapacity" and alienation when
they are no longer suited to the situations they were
i
designed to ameliorate. Because any orientation has
[rhetorical motives and relies upon rational as well as i
i 1
emotional appeals for its persuasiveness, Burke advocates
/'dialectical biologism" (Crusius 359), a union of opposites
I
that would recognize both the rational and psychological
i
Jbasis of cooperation. In other words, "social life, like j
I :
art, is a problem of appeal (PC 264, Burke’s emphasis). To .
I
initiate a sociological critique of orientation, Burke turns
I
!to art— with "its discordant voices arising out of many 1
jsystems" (CS viii)— and the poetic metaphor because they canj
igive us
I ,
i invaluable hints for describing modes of practical;
! action which are too often measured by simple i
tests of utility and too seldom with reference to '
the communicative, sympathetic, propitiatory :
factors that are clearly present in the procedures
: __________of formal art and must_ be as truly present in_____,
those informal arts of living we do not happen to j
call arts. (PC 264) i
|
In Attitudes toward History Burke identifies James’s comic |
frame of acceptance as the one necessary to help us see that'
i
[systems of orientation are not necessarily evil, but
I
[mistaken, when they legislate any one rigid scheme of
jliving. He advocates viewing criticism in its comic
.aspects; that is, it becomes for him a process of ranging
! >
through perspectives for the sake of distinguishing between ;
the "necessarily mistaken" (the comic view) (ATH 41) and the
( i
t . . I
j V X C l O U S . ;
t 1
I
[ Chapter IV discusses Burke’s work in the 1940s. I
Ibegin with a consideration of the impact that the rapidly
escalating war in Europe has on American critical debates.
i
Revelations having poured in from abroad concerning the !
Stalinist purges of the middle and late 1930s and apparently
■been confirmed by the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, many
Marxist intellectuals diverted their attention from the [
merits of Communism to the issue of whether the U.S. should ^
intervene in the war in Europe. And critics of all sorts !
retreated from public life to the university, where the New
i '
[Criticism began to take hold as the orientation in favor. j
To foreground the character of the critical scenery during [
f
,the 1940s and the views toward language that informed them, ;
I reconstruct Dwight MacDonald’s and Archibald MacLeish’s I
polemical debates over intervention. Burke "puts in his |
oar" by publishing several articles that address this
political climate, including "The Rhetoric of Hitler’s
I
i
j’Battle’" (1938; rpt. in PLF. 1941), "Americanism:
Patriotism in General, Americanism in Particular,
jlnterspersed with Pauses" (1941), and "War and Cultural
jLife" (1942). As Burke sees it, democracy becomes a "key
term in the present structure of symbolic action" and hence
|We see him enlisting the methodology he formulated in the
1930s to discuss democracy’s shift from the ideal of
i
i"institutionalized dialectical method" to its use in the
I
[early 1940s as a term to oppose fascism ("War and Cultural
'Life" 404)
With the publication of The Philosophy of Literary
I [
Form, Burke also demonstrates the evolution of his thinking |
i
'concerning the relations between economic (i.e., Marxist)
i
[and psychological (i.e. Freudian) interpretations of human
'relations. The essay "Twelve Propositions on the Relation
jBetween Economics and Psychology" is another instance of
!
jBurke (as pragmatist) attempting to unite disparate
'viewpoints on common ground. Such a parliamentary dialectic
"should avoid the coaching of unnecessary factional dispute 1
jby considering modes of response applicable to all men and
:it should confine differences solely to those areas where
i
'differences are necessary" (PLF 313, Burke’s emphasis).
Burke launches his trilogy of works on human relations
I
with the publication of A Grammar of Motives in 1945 and A !
Rhetoric of Motives in 1950. Both works derive from his !
'overwhelming sense that the political and critical machinery;
j i
of his day were partisan to the point of being totalitarian |
j ,
in their insistence on "inquisitorial dictatorship" ("As I
j
Was Saying" 26). Hitler had been suppressing alternative
i 1
jviewpoints and violently repressing all dissent for years. f
Anti-fascist polemics in the United States resorted to
fascist methods also in order to ensure a unified response
: I
to Hitler. Meanwhile, Burke continues his reclamation of 1
rhetoric, which now becomes for him the primary means of
'considering all discourse that would seek "unity" in the
name of "identification." A Rhetoric of Motives is the
culuminating act in Burke’s development from an aesthete in
1920 to a rhetorician in 1950. To arrive at rhetoric as
■identification, Burke assumes the multi-colored garb that I
have already distinguished: rhetorician, pragmatist,
bohemian, critic of democracy, and American. By the time we
get to A Rhetoric of Motives. the stakes involved in
i
{sociological criticism are indeed high. It is through a ,
! i
rhetoric of motives that we can best understand, for
i
[instance, the human capacity for "Order, the Secret, and the
> I
: i
Kill," each a rhetorical over-emphasis on the outer reaches1
i :
of a Rhetoric of Motives" (RM 265). Burke’s hopeful but
guarded conclusion to A Rhetoric of Motives brings his work
in the 1940s to a close and provides us with a suitable
point with which to begin ordering our subject: "And finally]
jlet us observe, all about us, goading us, though it be
[fragments, the motive that attains its ultimate
jidentification in the thought, not of the unversal
holocaust, but of the universal order" (RM 333).
31
Notes
;1. In The Armed Vision. Stanley Edgar Hyman identifies
|Burke’s project as "Burkology" (359). Burke himself
(responded to the identification of his method as ’ ’Burkology”
jin a letter to Cowley dated March 16, 1955: ’ ’And if one
great critic, though young yet, said that my major specialty
is Burkology, it is even much more likely that my major
'ailment is Burkitis" (SC 324). "Burkeranto" and "Burkarama"
[have been suggested to me by colleagues. i
i
i2. Frank Lentricchia uses a similar procedure to address
jthe question, "Can a literary intellectual . . . do radical j
work as a literary intellectual?" (2) in Criticism and I
Social Change. Lentricchia uses as his representative
anecdote Burke’s speech, "Revolutionary Symbolism in
■America," delivered at the First American Writers Congress
(in 1935. My approach differs from Lentricchia*s in that I
jam more concerned with discussing the scenic influences on
'Burke’s work than with constructing a moral complaint like j
Lentricchia*s. I select as representative anecdotes those
jsituations that help us understand the scenic particularity
of Burke’s critical work. The "Revolutionary Symbolism in
America" speech is only one of these anecdotes.
3. See Burke’s "Reduction and Scope" in A Grammar of :
Motives (97) for a discussion of the problems of selecting
circumference.
'4. The phrase "text milieu" is Geoffrey Hartmann’s
(description of the textual scenery that informs critical
acts. See the chapter on Burke in Criticism in the
■ Wilderness.
I 1
.
5. See, for instance, Dewey’s Logic: The Theory of Inquiry j
and Hook’s Philosophy and Public Policy. j
6. Pragmatism, as Robert Wess has pointed out, is currently j
enjoying a revival in the recent works of Terry Eagleton and
Frank Lentricchia (123).
7. Burke discusses Veblen’s concept of "trained incapacity" j
extensively in Permanence and Change. 7-11.
8. Burke notes in a recent interview with Richard i
Kostelanetz that during the market crash of ’29, he "was I
Icompletely free" as a consequence of his move to the
country. ,
19. Russell Jacoby details the movement of public
(intellectuals to the university during the middle of this
jcentury in The Last Intellectuals (1987).
110. "Rugged individualism" is Herbert Hoover’s phrase for
[the Republican philosophy of government prior to the market j
crash of 1929. Hoover believed that rugged individualism i
!was opposed to paternalism and state socialism (New York j
Times October 23, 1928).
11. The debate over what constitutes "American" literature |
had been initiated in the nineteenth century by writers such'
as Emerson and Whitman and was fueled by critics such as Van
Wyck Brooks in America* s Coming-of-Age (1915).
> i
| i
;12. See, for instance, "An Interview with Kenneth Burke" by
John Woodcock, 1977; "Richard Kostelanetz Interviews Kenneth
Burke," 1987; and "Counter-Gridlock: An Interview with
Kenneth Burke," 1983. The last interview is especially
helpful.
33
The Representative Frame of Burke’s Radiations:
Pragmatism, Rhetoric, and Democracy
The cycle of terms I have chosen to feature in Burke’s
writing from the 1920s to the 1950s--the set of generating
i
principles informing the rest of this text--requires |
attention at the outset because the meanings of terms like |
I
rhetoric, pragmatism, democracy, bohemianism, and I
[ Americanism in contemporary parlance range far afield. As
will become evident, the function of such terms for Burke
evolves as he refines (and revises) his critical approach in
t I
response to various cultural and historical developments. !
In addition, the meaning we now associate with these five
terms, though hardly uniform, has no doubt evolved as well
since 1950, and it would seem worthwhile to identify their
l
historical function--particularly as it relates to Burke’s
inquiry. As a terministic cluster, these terms not only
direct us to Burke’s relations with his critical scene, but
they help us recover useful applications that may help us
characterize our "scene" with more precision and greater
flexibility.
34
t
I. Burke * s Pragmatism
I place the discussion of pragmatism up front because
i !
jas an attitude or orientation to the production and judgmentj
of knowledge, it guides Burke's recovery of rhetoric as the j
jagency of critical inquiry. Pragmatism's function in
philosophical circles was first described by C.S. Peirce in
1878. But William James, a close friend and colleague of
I
!
Peirce, develops the concept in the direction most pertinent
I
jfor our study of Burke. Because of his enormous influence
on Burke’s thought, particularly during the 1930s, it is !
useful to recover James’s use of the term.
i
| In "What Pragmatism Means" (1907) James provides a
Jsimple but representative anecdote to explain pragmatism's 1
j I
function in philosophical inquiry. The situation is this: A
^group of campers, James among them, suppose a squirrel to bei
i
t -
clinging to one side of a tree-trunk, while a human observer
^stands on the opposite side of the tree. Attempting to get '
Isight of the squirrel, the witness moves completely around
I
I
jthe tree, but finds that the squirrel always keeps the tree
I
jbetween himself and the observer. The resultant
metaphysical problem is this: "Does the man go around the j
[squirrel or not?" (41). The observer circles the tree, of
course, but does he go around the squirrel? As James |
i ;
describes it, "a ferocious metaphysical dispute" ensued
■ I
'among the campers in the "unlimited leisure of the >
35
t
wilderness" (41). Mindful that "whenever you meet a j
i
contradiction you must make a distinction" (41), James j
'explains that which perspective is right depends "upon what
you practically mean by ’going round’ the squirrel" (42).
» I
I
In other words, if the system of orientation is defined by
the points on a compass, the observer does circle the ^
squirrel. But if the system of orientation is from the
squirrel’s perspective, to "go round" would mean being in
front, to the side and behind the squirrel. The
metaphysical problem is a terministic one, dependent upon
I i
one’s conception of "going round." As James sees it, "make
the distinction, and there is no occasion for further
dispute" (42).
1 The anecdote seems trivial, but it points to two of the!
fundamental aspects of pragmatism that are important for our
I
understanding of Burke’s application of the philosophy.
First, as James sees it, "the pragmatic method is primarily
i !
a method of settling metaphysical disputes that otherwise
i i '
i 1
would be interminable" (42). It is thus a process of 1
k \
mediation that makes the nature of a dispute more evident j
without necessarily privileging one side or the other. If
I
there is no practical difference between metaphysical *
systems, then all dispute is idle. In a serious debate,
says James, "we ought to be able to show some practical
difference that must follow from one side or the other being
i
i
right" (42-3). Second, the pragmatist is one who views
philosophical dispute as an invitation to study the
jresources of linguistic placement; our terminology and the
system of meanings we derive from it mediate our conception j
jof experience, and it is the pragmatist's task to elaborate |
the consequences of this orientation. The affinity of ;
jpragmatism with rhetorical inquiry certainly appears close j
f
when we recall the Aristotelian view that the rhetorician
i
ought to examine both sides of an issue and the Burkean
E
Argument in Counter-Statement that a "Lexicon Rhetoricae"
ought to provide a judgment machine for "clarifying issues"
and "making the nature of a controversy more definite" (ix).
i
J
j Historically, the conceptualization and uses of
pragmatism range from its description in Kant as the
|
("counsel of prudence" (Baldwin 321), in Emerson as the ideal
uses of nature ("Nature"), in Peirce as a means of
critiquing metaphysics ("How to Make Our Ideas Clear"), in \
’ James as the ultimate test of truth ("The Meaning of
^ruth"), and finally in Dewey and Hook as the naturalistic j
ilogic for evaluating and reconstructing human experience
|(Edwards 435). In William James we see pragmatism's link to
(realism expressed in the argument that the "pragmatist turns
j i
away from abstraction and insufficiency, from verbal |
i I
solutions, from bad a priori reasons, from fixed principles,!
t
closed systems, and pretended absolutes and origins" ("What
i ;
i !
Pragmatism Means" 45). That pragmatism was the fundamental ,
i
attitude informing empiricism became the basis for Dewey’s j
intrumentalist, utilitarian argument that a theory of
knowledge such as pragmatism ought to be connected with "an
empirically verifiable theory of behavior" (Human Nature and
I conduct 125). As Burke himself points out in A Grammar of !
Motives, pragmatism reaches its purified state in P.W. j
i
jBridgeman’s "operationalism," the view that the meaning of a;
i
concept is "synonmous with the corresponding set of
I
j
operations" (or agencies) (GM 280). (For instance, "a ]
'concept of temperature would thus be equated with the actual'
operations by which one recorded temperature" (GM 280).)
j
i ;
jThough this positivist strain in pragmatism was certainly (
prevalent by 1945, Burke recognizes that viewing pragmatism
I
primarily in terms of means, as a method only, is reductive.
As he puts it, the pragmatist might better see "instruments ,
j :
jthemselves as merely one aspect of a dialectic, one voice
among the several voices whose competitive cooperation is ;
i
I
necessary for the development of mature meanings" (GM 280).
The positive implications of pragmatism for Burke, at i
least early in his career, derive not from the utilitarian
aspect of pragmatism initiated by James and elaborated by j
Dewey, but from its capacity for generating pluralistic j
accounts of human relations. Burke draws instead upon |
I
'another aspect of James’s pragmatism in adopting the belief ,
that its characteristic attitude helps one escape the
typically reductive arguments made by either side in I
metaphysical disputation. As James sees it, pragmatism also
38
recognizes the "open air and possibilities of nature, as j
i I
I !
against dogma, artificiality, and the pretense of finality
i
i I
jin truth" ("What Pragmatism Means" 45). The aspect of |
t :
pragmatism central to our concerns here is not so much its
I i
jrole as a method of verifying metaphysical claims or the 1
I
|"unity" of a philosophical system as it is its purpose in j
'extending the range of intellectual inquiry. That is, as
I
James sees it, pragmatism also directs us to "reality’s
diversities" as well as to its unity, so that thoughts of a
iworld "imperfectly unified" must be "sincerely entertained"
»
[in a pluralistic account of reality ("The One and the Many"
108) .
During the early stages of Burke’s critical writings,
I
'pragmatism is a "spirit" or purpose that ought to attend
t
critical reflection. For example, in "Chicago and Our
National Gesture" (1923), he derides those critics who
(
proclaim "the doctrine of a national literature" (500).
I
i f
|Such critics fail to "apply the spirit of pragmatism in i
I i
forming judgment" (501). To Burke, this failure is "[a]n
I !
[exceptionally bewildering mistake on the part of the
nationalists, since pragmatism has been so well nourished in'
! ;
jAmerica" (501). Any attempt to silence alternative voices
I
I
(literary, critical, philosophical) by proclaiming America’s
"massiveness" betrays the spirit of pragmatism, a move that
causes the individual to be looked upon as "the microcosm of
this same massiveness" (501). The assertion of a national
jliterature eradicates differences (such as those we inherit ;
Ifrom Europe) by not recognizing them. Thus, early in his
career, Burke views pragmatism as a compulsion to !
j i
•investigate the monist, anti-democratic rhetoric of
i 1
Rationalism.
I |
! In an important review of John Dewey’s The Quest for 1
Certainty in 1930, Burke develops his view of pragmatism in |
an new direction. While he questions whether Dewey’s
scientific method can produce good results in a criticism of
values, he wholeheartedly embraces the purpose of Dewey’s
pragmatism. As Burke sees it, theological or metaphysical
I
systems get certainty "by affirming dogmatically how things
are, how they must be" ("Intelligence as a Good" 384;
Burke’s emphasis). In a counter-statement to the "living
lie" of metaphysics (383), Burke writes that
pragmatic knowledge is erected out of doubt,
! questioning, experimentation. It has no vested
interests; to have one of its beliefs undermined
( is a gain, an aid in the better understanding of |
[ processes. It defines as truth what works.
| Possessing no certainties in itself, it has
, undeniably increased the certainties of living.
(384) i
I
Here we have a proposition that encapsulates the Burkean
i
penchant for devising methods for elaborating the ambiguity
of critical systems. "Erected out of doubt," Burke’s
i
lifelong attempt to view critical theory as a "frame of
acceptance" and to examine the consequences of such frames
typifies the pragmatist’s concern for destructing certainty ;
40!
'and extending the dialectic between systems that compete for
[
j i
our allegiance. This attitude is prevalent in Burke’s work !
! !
throughout the 1930s. Living the "good life," he writes in I
I *
I t
1937, requires that we formulate a type of criticism that |
i
pshould seek to clarify the ways in which any structure j
develops self-defeating emphases" and should watch for |
| |
"’unintended by-products,’" seeking to "avoid being driven
'into a corner in its attempt to signalize them" (ATH 259). j
Our criticism is "driven into a corner" when we attempt to
replace a metaphysical system with another whose
consequences we may fail to realize. Such rationalism, as
» K
James himself was quick to point out, denies that "in
'practical life perfection is something far off and still in
Ithe process of achievement" ("The Present Dilemma in j
Philosophy" 30-1).
I
I Timothy Crusius has identified a similar line of
thought in Burke’s criticism during the 1930s. In his as
I
iyet unpublished critique of Marxism in the alternately
|entitled Auscultation. Creation, and Revision, or The Rout
of the Esthetes, or Literature. Marxism, and Beyond. Burke
is a "skeptical pragmatist" (Crusius 365). As Crusius
observes, we see in Burke’s analysis of the shift from 1
taestheticism to socialism during the 1930s a characteristic
Application of American pragmatism: "shrewd reality
i !
assessment yoked to respect for getting positive outcomes in
ithe world" (355), Crusius also calls Burke a pluralist, j
41
"the only stance consistent with pragmatism, which must not
i
be blindly loyal to any single theory to respond adequately
!to the test of ’what works’" (365). During the 1930s,
Burke’s pragmatism helped him avoid the blindnesses of
socialism while retaining its fundamental distrust of
; i
i
bureaucratized solutions to economic alienation. Many of j
his later efforts, particularly dramatism, can be viewed as
attempts to elude the temporary comforts of reductionist
i
metaphysics.
| During the 1940s, pragmatism’s guiding influence on
Burke diminishes, mostly because the contemporary function
of the term had been co-opted by those who would feature the
term "agency" when attributing motives to human action. In
one sense, pragmatism is a "principle of mediation that all
] j
philosophies have in common" (GM 276), but in its more
contrained uses, it becomes the process of considering means
*
in terms of particular ends. That is, after Dewey,
1 i
! i
pragmatists begin to base judgment upon the economic |
usefulness and marketability of particular orientations. J
Pragmatism as a purpose is supplanted by pragmatism as a
means, and the resulting monism, under the guise of
i ;
capitalism, abandons "what works" for what has the most J
"cash value."
; The evolution of Burke’s allegiance to pragmatic
knowing demonstrates his sense that as philosophical systems
find the circumstances they were designed to explain t
undergoing radical transformation, a certain amount of
casuistic stretching must be performed if the system is to 1
I
continue providing representative and useful descriptions. j
Tracing the function of pragmatism in Burke’s lexicon helps J
us characterize in precisely what ways cultural |
!
icircumstances shift his philosophical emphasis, as well as ,
I
his apprehension of a given terministic screen’s scope. By
I
'1945 pragmatism’s range of meanings had been significantly
'narrowed by the operational empiricism of people like
Bridgeman. Burke recognizes that pragmatism had become too
Ireified to be useful for constructing a pluralistic account
i v
|of critical activity. Scientific inquiry should, in its
I
ideal form, analyze "human conduct in an integrative
vocabulary, whereby people may actively cooperate instead of
4 i
[becoming merely spies upon one another" ("Methodology of the
| 1
Scramble" 250). But in its alliance with technology during
the frantic struggle for the means of routing the enemy j
<
[during World War II, scientific pragmatism, now 'operational;
! i
t j
lempiricism," had become a means of technological and i
■ I
economic warfare, abandoning its role in purposeful
mediation.
i
Pragmatism has, since the 1940s, functioned more as a
jrather broad intellectual attitude than it has an organized
'philosophical movement. According to H.S. Thayer, however,
."the positive suggestions of pragmatism have been ;
!
disseminated into current intellectual life as practices
freely adopted and taken for granted to an extent that no j
j
longer calls for special notice" (435). This climate is I
i
changing, however, and recent critical evaluations of Burke,I
I
iTerry Eagleton, and Frank Lentricchia among others, have 1
I I
sought to identify the pragmatist tendency in critical !
I I
jtheory.1 Pragmatism is not only, however, an informing i
'attitude of Marxist critics. Deconstruction, in its attempt
to demonstrate that the hierarchical oppositions implicit in
\
'texts are but metaphysical impositions, would seem to typify
i
I
jthe pragmatist’s concern for distinguishing the bases for
I
[philosophical dispute. But in their insistence that a
metaphysics of presence and a logocentric worldview is
ultimately futile, deconstructionists abandon the
[pragmatist’s search for "what works." Burke’s relevance in;
| i
a critique of this "deconstructive turn" has been sketched ,
|by Greig Henderson:
j Having lost the plenitude of a world of reference,
I the linguistic nihilist [i.e. deconstructionist] ,
luxuriates in its absence. By contrast, the |
Burkean pragmatist and rhetor rejects the all-or-
nothing posturing and tempers his anti-
foundationalism with the recognition that language
is already in the world and does its work of power
regardless of our philosophies. (99) j
I
I
Burke is, like the deconstructionist, supremely suspect of [
the truth value of metaphysical constructs, or
i
!foundationalism, but rather than deconstructing them per se,
i
he views his task as being the elaboration of their
effectiveness in regulating behavior. In fact, he
! «4|
t ;
demonstrates this concern repeatedly during the 1940s with j
I
I
his sustained critiques of Marxism and formalism. The
i
Rhetoric of Religion, to cite a more recent example, does
not obliterate theological metaphysics as much as it !
I
(demonstrates how logocentrism, with God as the divine Logos,|
jbecomes rhetorically powerful. Herein resides the j
relationship between pragmatism and rhetorical inquiry in
Burke’s thought. While sharing the pragmatist’s distrust of
metaphysics, Burke subsumes this orientation under the !
umbrella of rhetorical inquiry because he cannot ignore the i
,fact that metaphysical rationale function quite effectively
j
as appeals in the world.
I
!
;II. Burke * s Rhetoric
As early as 1931, Isidor Schneider identifies Burke’s
method to reconstruct a reputable "new view of rhetoric"
i
|(CRKB 23). By 1950, R.P. Blackmur sees rhetoric as Burke’s
"cradle-word" and feels he "would rather be called Rhetor,
I
as honorific and as description, than anything else" (CRKB
;245). Marie Hochmuth Nichols’s "Kenneth Burke and the ’New
f
IRhetoric’" (1952) and Daniel Fogarty’s Roots for a New
1 I
' Rhetoric (1959) argue that "rhetorician" is the term that ■
'confers identity upon Burke’s career. And more recently,
William F. Irmscher, citing Burke’s inter-disciplinariness,
i
.argues that "rhetorician subsumes all of [his] roles, for
the rhetorician transcends diversity in the search for
45!
i j
!unity" (105). (Without arguing the matter too strenuously
jat this point, I suggest that it is more accurate to view '
Burke as a rhetorician who multiplies diversity for the sake
jof transcendence.) While there is clearly strong consensus
that Burke is primarily a "rhetorician," the elucidation of
j i
just what that title means has remained somewhat vague.
Early in his career Burke is primarily interested in
technical rhetoric, the rhetorical properties of form and
I
style. Counter-Statement * s "Lexicon Rhetoricae," Burke’s
machine for criticism, elaborates the dynamics of formal
jappeals. Technically speaking, however, he focuses upon the
I
psychology of the audience, and as such he moves toward
philosophical rhetoric. By the time he writes A Rhetoric of
Motives he has expanded his concept of rhetoric to include
much that distinguished Aristotelian rhetoric, but he has
also qualified "persuasion" by showing how a rhetoric of
identification may "throw light on literary texts and human ;
' i
relations generally" (RM xiv-xv). As he puts it, "While \
i i
jinterested always in rhetorical devices, we have sought
jabove all else to write a ’philosophy of rhetoric’" (RM xv).
Burke’s philosophy of rhetoric demands careful scrutiny
I |
because it evolves over his entire career and subsumes many
of the traditional principles of rhetoric along the way.
And his additions to this philosophy of rhetoric do not
necessarily supplant his previous formulations. The
philosophy is aggregative rather than refined.
| Because Burke’s reclamation of rhetoric focuses
jprimarily upon its role in philosophical inquiry,
jAristotle’s version of philosopical rhetoric bears a closer
jlook. The primary function of rhetoric for Aristotle in the
I ;
i Rhetoric is "not so much to persuade, as to find out in each
I
lease the existing means of persuasion" (1355b). In Books I '
j
and II, rhetoric is primarily an act of Invention, an
activity of mind, a faculty of "furnishing arguments"
(1356a), or "discovering the possible means of persuasion in
^reference to any subject whatever" (1355b). "Accurate
I
.scientific knowledge" (1355a) alone does not enable one to
persuade or communicate effectively. Rhetoric is the shared
act of deliberation, a consideration of the probable, of
"things which may . . . be other than they are" (1357a). j
1 I
There are no "systematic rules" (1357a) for practicing
rhetoric. One needs more than a collection of techniques
i
,for arranging and styling sentences. Rhetoric, in its
function as the study of persuasive resources (rhetorica I
| I
docens). enlists an attitude characterized by a willingness
I
j
to map the subtleties of a subject and exploit its |
inconsistencies, to branch out in multiple directions as
I
discursive contexts change. Skillful rhetoric provisionally
i
I
creates and frames a world, recognizes the complexities and
' I
ambiguities of such creations, then pauses to consider the
i
semantic possibilities of terms in alternative contexts.
Burke adopts this view of rhetoric as a means of elaborating!
47
the ambiguities implicit in metaphysical constructs, and
! views such applications of rhetoric (rhetorica utens) as i
attempts to centralize power and rationalize action. Such a
I
study of rhetoric contrasts with the more technical j
applications--the identification of tropes that frame
I
Idiscourse— pursued by recent tropological critics, such as
I >
; I
Hayden White and Harold Bloom.2
I
i The study of rhetoric for Burke culminates, as
i
lAristotle began, with the pairing of rhetoric and dialectic.;
' i
"Rhetoric," Aristotle wrote, "is a counterpart of dialectic"
(13541). As he saw it, rhetoric was not the exact copy of
i 1
dialectic, but was a cooperative enterprise, corresponding
to it as the antistrophe to the strophe in a choral ode. As
a counterpart (antistrophe), rhetoric moved in the opposite |
direction from dialectic (strophe). There was no hierarchy
implied, however; the movement between the strophe and the
antistrophe in a choral ode was simply from right to left.
i
!ln Burke’s revision of Aristotle, dialectic and rhetoric do '
i
i j
not move in opposite directions but work together as the J
:invention of perspectives and the elaboration of ambiguity. '
As a terministic screen, "dialectic rhetoric" enables one to
i
[characterize the nature of conflict; in the interest of !
1
jplurality, it sees such representations as momentary stops
on the way to more well-rounded accounts of situations. To
transcend the limits imposed by disciplinary-bound
interpretations, rhetorical inquiry individuates terms, i
revealing the complexities of meaning liberated by ]
i
heuristics like the pentad. Such a process may lead, as
j
William A. Covino points out, to multiple viewpoints and a
I 1
greater appreciation for the omnipresence of ambiguity in |
I |
■any discourse (The Art of Wondering passim). Viewing j
j i
rhetoric as Invention--not exclusively but provisionally, in!
the interest of resuscitating a somewhat forgotten aspect of.
rhetoric’s meaning--is one way to understand Burke’s method
more clearly and to appreciate why rhetoric, when combined
with the generative power of dialectic, serves "as an
instrument for clarifying critical issues (not so much for
I
settling issues as for making the nature of a controversy
i
more definite)" (CS ix). As the multiplication of
perspectives, rhetoric, like all art as Burke sees it,
"serves to undermine any one rigid scheme of living (CS
v i i i ) .
Very early in his career as a critic Burke began to
formulate a method for multiplying perspectives, one that
I
develops concomitantly with his study of rhetorical devices
I
(for the sake of stylistic innovation. In 1921 his desire to!
jforestall resolution created problems for him when writing
critical reviews: "The difficulty lies in this: in reading
Pater, I get into Plato; in reading his introduction to
, Plato, I decide that I must read Hegel; now, Hegel may throw
some more light on Spengler, since Spengler’s cultural
seasons must be simply one more twist to the Zeitgeist" (SC
’ 102). And so on. This kind of exploration characterized
much of Burke’s early work. In 1936 Cowley saw this
'activity as Burke’s "old vice,"
which is that of the very keen-nosed but
undertrained hound dog--he starts out a-helling
after a rabbit, almost tracks it down, but gets
turned aside by the strong scent of a fox, runs
! into a place where the fox scared up a partridge, 1
hunts for the partridge, feels hungry, and digs up
a field mouse. (SC 217) I
Burke’s inquisitive mind keeps him from settling for too .
long in one place, a habit that forces him to confront the >
problem of shaping his writing to meet the formal demands of
."unity" and "conclusiveness." Even though we might expect
conventional practice to exert its power most effectively on
i
i 1
him while he was struggling to make a living off of his
t
writing, he resists these ideals vigorously.
By the time he writes A Grammar of Motives. Burke has
worked out some more specific principles for multiplying
perspectives and identified more directly the method behind
the view of rhetorical inquiry first advanced in the |
"Lexicon Rhetoricae" section of Counter-Statement. In A
Grammar of Motives he formulates the pentad, his generating
set of terms for answering the question: "What is involved,
when we say what people are doing and why they are doing
it?" (GM xv). The question asks not simply what people are
doing and why, but is directed more at the "talk" about
motives. The pentad’s terms— act, scene, agent, agency,
[
purpose— are not, Burke argues, "terms that avoid ambiguity.!
(but terms that clearly reveal the strategic spots at which j
ambiguities necessarily arise" (GM xviii; Burke’s emphasis).
And rather than avoiding ambiguity altogether, Burke
jconsiders it his task to study and clarify the resources of i
ambiguity that result from the application of terms to
different situations. For instance, when a critic
i
identifies distinct and separate acts or situations by the
^ . I
same term, he or she introduces "a certain margin of
'ambiguity, an ambiguity as great as the difference between
\
jthe two subjects that are given the identical title” (GM
i
xix). The pentad is one way of reworking strategies, ,
situations, symbolic acts, motives, and frameworks as the
i
context of discourse changes, and in this sense, is like
dialectic, the aim of which, Burke claims, is ”to give us a
representation by the use of mutually related or interacting
perspectives" (GM 503). As a method of multiplying
perspectives, the pentad can help one make well-rounded
statements, and ”[i]t is by the approach through a variety 1
I
of perspectives that we establish a character’s reality” (GM
i
j504). Rhetorical considerations help Burke accumulate
(viewpoints; absolute truths become temporary stops,
enlightening perhaps, but nonetheless subject to subsequent
transformation.
i
Burke elaborates the view of rhetoric as Invention in A
Rhetoric of Motives when he pairs rhetoric with
identification. "Persuasion," the traditional key term of i
51
I i
rhetoric, is akin to identification in that "a speaker |
I
persuades an audience by the use of stylistic
identifications; his act of persuasion may be for the |
purpose of causing the audience to identify itself with the |
jspeaker’s interests . . . to establish rapport" (RM 46). j
i 1
'Identification, however, focuses the attention on the means j
of alliance, and thus "division" or difference is also a
factor. People agree with each other only when their
alliances transcend their differences. A rhetoric of
I
imotives, conceived as the study of human relations, Burke
jcontends, should thus make the nature of disagreement and
f
division more recognizable (RM 265). Any critical method
f
that makes explicit the interrelationships among people,
texts, social circumstances and acts of identification can I
be helpful:
So we must keep trying anything and everything,
1 improvising, borrowing from others, developing
; from others, dialectically using one text as
j comment upon another, schematizing; using the
incentive to new wanderings, returning from these
excursions to schematize again, being oversubtle
where the straining seems to promise some further
glimpse, and making amends by reduction to very
simple anecdotes. (RM 265)
j Burke’s most thorough presentation of rhetoric, and the
I
|apex toward which his earlier technical rhetoric builds,
occurs in A Rhetoric of Motives. Concerning one’s
identification with a particular discipline and the
possibilities of autonomous practice, he writes, "[W]e are ,
f
clearly in the region of rhetoric when considering the !
52|
i
identifications whereby a specialized activity makes one a
j # I
participant in some social or economic class" (RM 28). ■
i
Identifying disciplinary practice or the manifestations of I
f
I
culture in individual behavior invites rhetorical inquiry I
I
into critical practice. As a result, "rhetorical j
jconsiderations may carry us far afield, leading us to
violate the principle of autonomy separating the various
disciplines" (RM 43). Burke’s rhetorical inquiry—
initiating as it does the interpretation of interpretations-
-is one reason for his elusiveness. The particular strength
of his system is that it does point us to those strategies
k
whereby critical systems transform ambiguities into assets.
His aim is not to dispose of ambiguities altogether, or to
dispose of systems that employ them. Rather, it is to
create the potential for drawing new distinctions, for
(Sustaining inquiry.
|
Identification is so complex that limiting the critical
i
I
I .
approach prior to investigating the act can lead to
oversimplification. Burke opts for critical movements that
fluctuate between the extremes of systematization and
(
jongoing dialectic. By moving forward he pursues the j
I 1
[ramifications of selected perspectives on discourse to their
eventual reduction into momentarily stable categories, then
' i
]
he moves on by naming the same discursive situation in !
different ways, without necessarily confining himself to the
limitations of past perspectives. Although this activity j
characterizes Burke’s other work as well, one sustained
example of this shifting of perspectives occurs in section
I
III of A Rhetoric of Motives. Entitled "Order," this
section begins with the notion of the unifying concept, then
suggests the many ways in which particular terms, such as ]
!"courtship," make identification an act of ambiguous j
reference or "rationalization." Burke deliberately replaces
these terms with alternative terms (such as "killing"),
casting the same situation in a decidedly different light.
By the end of the section, we have multiple perspectives on ,
the critical practice of creating order.
Burke consistently re-emphasizes what has now become
one of the primary justifications for pluralistic accounts
of human activity. His defense of such pluralism is
grounded by an appreciation of indeterminacy, or by his
faith in a humanized state of doubt. Purposely shifting
contextual definitions has its justification in the belief
Ithat critics have many roads open to them when trying to
i
describe human action; people act in situations peculiar to
their scene and also in situations that extend through
i
.centuries (GM 84). As Jonathan Culler has put it, the
meaning of human acts is at once context-bound and
infinitely extended by boundless context (133). The belief
that meaning is indeterminate need not forestall the pursuit;
i
of more complete explanations. We instead feel the need to ,
jpress on toward better explanations. As Burke casts the
I
situation, rhetorical inquiry of the sort he advocates, |
*
would help us take delight in the Human Barnyard, 1
! with its addiction to the Scramble, an area that
i would cause us great unhappiness were we not able
j to transcend it by appreciating, classifying and
' tracing back to their origins in Edenic simplicity
, those linguistic modes of suasion that often seem
[ little more than malice and the lie. (GM 442)
i
i
IBurke asks us to suspend the impulse to identify opposing
viewpoints as evil. When we do so we ignore our obligation
as critics to point to the reasons for our differences.
Certainly there will be struggles in the barnyard not worth
^sustained attention. But when we find ourselves bitterly
I
■condemning one another or resorting to other violent means
I
of rebuke, we have the responsibility as citizens to examine
I
our motives.
;III. Burke as Critic of Democracy
' Democracy, Burke argues in 1942, is "an institutional
izing of the dialectical method" ("War and Cultural Life" 1
I
1405). This statement is important because it indicates
Burke’s concern for merging critical inquiry with the
jpolitical process. Between the 1920s and 1950s, we find him
jrepeatedly making such a linkage, not exclusively to ground ;
^politics in a critical theory formulated independently, but
I
to demonstrate that criticism and politics are not mutually
exclusive practices. The aesthetic movement, most prominent
during the 1920s, had in its insistence on "art-for-art’s i
55
sake" removed criticism from the realm of political action.
Many aesthetic critics— including Joel Spingarn, Van Wyck
Brooks, and Irving Babbitt— were also eloquent social
!
J t
jcritics, of course, but literary criticism itself was not |
jthe place to initiate political debate.
| During the 1920s Burke’s political criticism was, like
that of his contemporaries, noticeably distinct from his
critical theorizing. But during this decade he begins to
J
launch a critique of democracy in fictional works like "The
Death of Tragedy" (1922) and "My Dear Mrs. Wurtelbach"
;(1923). With the publication of Counter-Statement in 1931
Burke integrates his view of American democracy into his
’ criticism. Art, he writes, is "eternal in so far as it
deals with the constants of humanity," but it is also
historical, "a particular adjustment to a particular cluster
'of conditions" (CS 107). And the critic, he proposes, might
attempt a description of the contemporary aesthetic
jconditions, since a "system of aesthetics subsumes a system,
|of politics" (CS 113). Burke describes an anti-practical
j
aesthetic that would be "driven back to democracy" (CS. 114).!
To Burke in 1931, democracy is '
i
a system of government based upon the fear that j
I central authority becomes bad authority-- '
I democracy, organized distrust, "protest made ;
1 easy," a babble of discordant voices, a colossal
1 getting in one’s own way— democracy, now
endangered by the apostles of hope who would
i attack it for its "inefficiency," whereas
, inefficiency is the one thing it has in its favorJ
j (CS 114)
;Burke pursues the implications of this concept of democracy j
jin Attitudes toward History, seeing it as a healthy '
{corrective to the "bureaucratization of the imaginative" and.
"trained incapacity." At the outset of World War II he
engages the issue of democracy most directly in "The
' I
Rhetoric of Hitler’s ’Battle,’" "Americanism: Patriotism in
General, Americanism in Particular, Interspersed with
Pauses," and "War and Cultural Life." To understand the
i
fundamental relationships Burke sees among pragmatism,
rhetoric, and democracy, and to characterize the impact on
his thinking of the historical situation, I trace in the
I
chapters to follow the permutations of "democracy"
■throughout his criticism.
Initially, however, it is important to detail the
function of "democracy" between 1920 and 1950, with
particular emphasis on the cultural circumstances that
f
ishifted democracy’s meanings and to which Burke responded.
To do so requires that we examine closely the political
developments that eventually prompted Burke to conceive of 1
democracy as "institutionalized dialectic," as necessarily ;
I
inefficient, as a means of expressing and reflecting both 1
t
conflicts and differences ("War and Cultural Life" 405), and
as, ideally, the political counterpart to American
I '
Jpragmatism. 1
Burke enters public life during the waning years of the
I
■Progressive Era (roughly 1900-1917). The concept of i
i
i
democracy informing the wideranging political reforms of the
I
period derived from what Russell L. Hanson describes as "the
simultaneous intensification of political involvement and
( the restriction of its scope" (241). The Progressive Era
was notable for rationalizing the regulatory state, and as
Hanson describes it, the implication was that democracy had
become too inefficient:
This conception of the regulatory state was
justified on the grounds that a regulatory state
would be an efficient and dependable way of
directing social processes, whereas other forms of
intervention would not. These criteria—
efficiency and dependability— were derived from
ostensible scientific analyses of organizational
behavior and economic development that drew
heavily upon an evolutionary understanding of
American society and its possibilities. (224-5)
Notable for our purposes is the rationale that efficient
government meant good government, and further, that
efficiency and dependability could be ensured by basing the
political process on behavioristic models. Extremists such
as Madison Grant in The Passing of the Great Race argued
i
'that democracy had tended toward "a standardization of type
and a diminution of the influence of genius," which
' J
consequently "increase[d] the preponderance of the lower
types and cause[d] a corresponding loss of efficiency in the
community as a whole" (rpt. in DeLorme and Mclnnis 42).
The Progressive Era’s emphasis on efficiency led to the
social conditions which Burke finds intolerable during the
1920s: rampant industrialization, unrestrained technology, ;
I 58
|
1 i
^government control over the dissemination of ideas, and the
jcentralization of authority. His argument in Counter-
i Statement that democracy’s one virtue was its inefficiency
directly challenges the Progressivist emphasis on government.
regulation. And the behaviorist model informing this desire,
;to make democracy "efficient" was unrepresentative as well, i
for as he notes in A Grammar of Motives, behaviorism would
idiscuss human motivation in terms of "conditioned reflex,"
r
'leaving behind the "linguistic rationalization which is so
i
jtypical of human motives" (GM 59). The behaviorist emphasis
|at the level of the State leads to greater concern not for
I
what people think, but for what they do, and as such, as
Noam Chomsky has noted, moves toward totalitarianism--
obedience secured by the regulated power of private practice
("The Bounds of Thinkable Thought" 30). American political
reform, as becomes evident to Burke during the 1930s, relied
much too heavily on the good will and beneficence of !
leaders, and too little on the need for parliamentary |
I
|wr angling.
I
i The desire for efficient reform legislation took a back
i j
;seat at the outset of World War I. And during the years 1
'immediately after the war, as Woodrow Wilson unsuccessfully !
| ,
isought to create the conditions for international :
1 I
cooperation, America became more isolationist, with pleas i
for Nationalism overcoming pleas for institutionalized '
dialectic, a turn of events leading to the anti-democratic j
jdemands of critics like Irving Babbitt in Democracy and
i Leadership for "moral leaders" who transcended the
mediocrity of the "numerical majority" (DeLorme and Mclnnis !
I ;
21). To Burke, this Nationalism was fascistic, depending
too heavily on "’benevolent* central authority— society j
i
jbased upon virtue, which is too flimsy a base" (CS 119). ,
The unintended by-product of efficient and dependable
i
government— the need for leaders who could direct the mob by
i
regulating social processes— compounded public alienation.
The "cure" for such alienation became during the 1920s the
;unifying plea for Americanism.
: To understand the crisis in democracy resulting from
jthis focus on Nationalism during the 1920s and to move
f
|toward Burke’s conception of democracy during the 1930s, it !
(
is helpful to enlist the characterization of liberal 1
I I
,democracy presented by Benjamin Barber in Strong Democracy.
)
iBarber provides us with a helpful perspective from which to
I
jview the function of democracy during the Progressive Era
!
1 j
land later, as well as one with which to understand Burke’s !
| I
;proposal for making democracy an "institutionalized j
i
Idialectic" that would seek unity in diversity.
I ;
j Barber describes this period as one in which three i
"dispositions" of democracy are evident: anarchist, realist,
, I
■and minimalist. During the Progressive Era, the "realist
^disposition" in Western liberal democracy gained ascendency.;
I
I
The guiding philosophy of the realist disposition is j
behaviorism: "Legislatures and courts alike deploy penal ;
jsanctions and juridical incentives aimed at controlling
;
behavior by manipulating--but not altering or transforming—
i
hedonistic self-interest" (13). Citizens are encouraged to
I
reformulate public goods in terms of private advantage. The
i
Progressive Era, with its emphasis on social reform guided '
I
by federal regulation, displays the realist disposition, and
jis guided by the theory of Cartesian politics--the view that
I
theory (in this case, reform legislation) should subdue the
Iworld of action. This realist disposition counters what
Barber calls the "anarchist disposition"— which views
j
[liberty as inversely proportional to the power of the
centralized government over individual will. As Barber
points out, the dialectic enfranchised by these two '
i t
i i
attitudes is profoundly schizophrenic: "failing to
'acknowledge any middle ground, it often trades in contrasts,
jn polarities, in radical dichotomies and rigid dualisms:
i
I
jterror or anarchy, force or freedom, fear or love" (14). j
j I
'Anarchism is conflict-denying, while realism is conflict
j ‘
jtolerating. Minimalism, however, is conflict-tolerating, !
I <
'seeking to reduce the "friction that occurs when individual i
freedom and statist power, when the realist and anarchist
dispositions, touch" (16). Minimalist democracy "envisions
j
in the activities of pluralistic associations and groups and
in the noncoercive education of civic men and women
alternatives to pure power relations and pure market
relations” (17). Burke’s version of democracy, in Barber’s
*
scheme, is minimalist--amelioration and dialectic being the
i
I
means of avoiding the rigid extremes of anarchy and realism.
i One of the key historical developments shaping Burke’s
conception of democracy during tbe 1920s and later was the
defeat of Wilson’s proposed League of Nations in 1919.
Wilson had called in 1918 for instituting a peace process
that would be "absolutely open" and "involve and permit
henceforth, no secret understandings of any kind" ("The
Fourteen Points" Morris 56). Wilson’s plea was for open
inquiry, minimalist democracy, on an international scale.
But the tide of Progressivism had receded following the war
and Americans had become increasingly isolationist.
Wilson’s critics objected that the United States should not
be compelled to intervene on the side of allied countries in
regional squabbles. The plea for cooperative inquiry went
unheard.
i
i
That a significant shift in the American attitudes
toward democracy had occurred following the war was
jevidenced also by the Supreme Court’s decision against
Abrams in 1919, and the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924.
Abrams and four others ("alien anarchists" they were called
(Hofstadter 313)) had been charged in violation of the 1918
Espionage Act for distributing leaflets critical of the
United States and its allies for intervening against the
Bolsheviks in Russia. Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his
'dissenting opinion, argued vigorously for the free trade in
I
jideas, that "the best test of truth is the power of the
I
thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the
!
market" (Hofstadter 316). But despite Holmes's argument for
a minimalist democracy, the expression of opinions
conflicting with American hegemony was repressed in the
I
interest of avoiding conflict. The Nationalist movement
expressed an intolerance for complexity, ambiguity, and
alternative perspectives because these things challenged the
sovereignty (and intentions) of popular American ideology.
(Though Wilson had argued in 1919 for extending "the
I
principle of justice to all peoples and nationalities, and
I
I
[for recognizing] their right to live on equal terms of
liberty and safety with one another, whether they be strong i
or weak" ("Fourteen Points" Morris 58), it was clear that
during the 1920s democracy had a realist disposition to
ensure through force the preservation of existing economic
land political hierarchies. The Sacco-Vanzetti case (1920- i
! I
I
1921) brought this fear of radicalism to the spotlight. j
One more important political development leading to i
Burke’s critique of democracy in Counter-Statement was the
movement toward what Hoover called "rugged individualism" in
1928. The premise behind Hoover’s argument for wresting j
control from the federal government and returning it to the
individual was that recovery from war had led to
"centralized despotism which undertook unprecedented !
63
responsibilities, assumed autocratic powers, and took over j
i
the business of citizens” ("Rugged Individualism" Morris
76). As Hoover saw it in 1928, Americans had the choice J
I
between rugged individualism and "paternalism and state j
socialism" (76). He denied that he espoused anarchism and !
i
laisseiz faire and in 1931 began to propose federally-
i
[financed corporate bail-outs. Such a practice became in
|l932 one of the fundamental issues of that year’s j
. i
[presidential campaign. Franklin D. Roosevelt denounced the
I
Hoover Administration for its hypocrisy:
| While it has been American doctrine that the
j government must not go into business in
■ competition with private enterprises, still it has
I been traditional, particularly in Republican |
[ administrations, for business urgently to ask the
| government to put at private disposal all kinds of
j government assistance. ("Commonwealth Club Speech"
i Hofstadter 338)
In becoming too efficiently concerned with preserving
iprivate interest, rugged individualists could rationalize
!the rescue of big business in the interest of the greater
I
public welfare. Roosevelt argued that the government should
only assume the function of economic regulation as a last j
resort, "to be tried only when private initiative, inspired
jby high responsibility, with such assistance and balance as ;
, I
government can give, has finally failed" (342).
j Roosevelt’s New Deal politics challenged the anarchist
^disposition in rugged individualism with broad-based i
government regulation of private industry. And despite the |
: fact that Roosevelt’s policies helped rescue the country
.from depression, many critics felt they constituted a j
I l
"serious fascist menace" (Dennis 155). Socialist critics, j
Burke among them, feared that the "bureaucratic fixities" ^
i \
had become too thoroughly "embodied in the realities of a
I ]
’ social texture" (ATH 225). Burke’s attack on fascism in j
"The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ’Battle’" sought to help us know
with greater accuracy "exactly what to guard against, if we ,
are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in
America" (PLF 191). Throughout the 1930s and later Burke
I
viewed New Deal politics with cautious skepticism,
recognizing the positive implications of "the dole," while
calling for protection against its potentially demoralizing
'effects on "ambition, work, earnings, [and] economic glory" ,
I
(CS 116). Nevertheless, in 1941 Burke pointed out that the 1
call for "sacrifice" in the interest of nationalistic ;
pursuits, so characteristic of New Deal reform, moved toward.
! i
totalitarianism. He proposes in "Americanism" an |
1 i
alternative course: j
The "total" or "totalitarian" patriot would make
nationalism the very center of his thinking, with
all else deduced from it. The "democratic"
patriot would consider his national identity as |
‘ one in a hierarchy or graded series of many
identities, all of them requiring their full
consideration when he is confronting issues and
making decisions. (2)
To forestall the alienating and destructive tendencies of
i
bureaucracy, Burke advocates the democratic principle that
multiple viewpoints help one transcend the unifying impulse i
in the interest of diversity and transcendence. On the one j
I
hand, we recognize the democratic ideal of unity-in-
| !
jdiversity but face the agonizing dilemma that we purchase
i 1
unity at the expense of foresaking alternative identities.
I
As a consequence, as Ralph Ellison notes in his
!
conceptualization of Burke’s "democracy," we seek
psychological security from within our inherited divisions
of the corporate American culture. We gaze
upon our fellows with a mixed attitude of fear,
suspicion and yearning. We repress an underlying
anxiety aroused by the awareness that we are
representative not only of one but of several
overlapping and constantly shifting categories;
and we stress our affiliation with that segment of
the corporate culture which has emerged out of our
parents’ past— racial, cultural, religious. (Going
to the Territory 19) ,
j
In institutionalizing dialectic through pragmatic and
rhetorical inquiry, Burke would have us examine our
repressed identities and enlist them in continual
sociological critique. What Barber calls "strong '
democracy"--"the politics of conflict, the sociology of
! I
pluralism, and the separation of private and public realms
of action" (117)--becomes a controlling purpose in Burkean
t 3
I 1
i
'criticism.
In 1931 Burke admonishes us to avoid pampering the
"’philosophy’ of efficiency" and rather to attempt to "bring
to the fore such ’Bohemian* qualities as destroy great j
practical enterprise" (CS 119). In a typically Burkean |
66
j"counter-aphorism" he writes, "When in Rome, do as the
!
jGfreeks— when in Europe, do as the Chinese" (CS 119). He
insists that the healthy alternative to anti-pragmatic,
I
'anti-rhetorical, and anti-democratic thought can be promoted
Ithrough the recognition of differences and the cultivation
of informed skepticism. The crisis in cultural
i ;
identification evidenced by the press for nationalistic
("literature" leads Burke to rediscover the pluralistic aims
I
of rhetorical inquiry. And in light of the impending
knternational spread of fascist thinking, such a recovery j
i 1
reminded his contemporaries that critical freedom was a
I
f
moral imperative. That Burke enacted this imperative in his
critical writing between the 1920s and 1950s, in his role as
the critic’s critic, can remind us all that it is through j
such inquiry that we might avoid factionalization and the
mystification of war, whose misguided proponents
t i
find solace in the thought of the great holocaust;
and they love the sheer hierarchical pageantry,
■ the Stoicism of the disciplinary drill, the sense
! of unity in the communal act of all the different :
military orders marching in step, or the pious
contemplation of the parade made static and j
"eternal," in the design of a military burial i
grounds, with its motionlessly advancing rank and
I file of graves. (RM 332) i
i
.To help us avoid marching in step (whether it be goose step !
or the unwitting endorsement of reified critical
i
Iperspectives), Burke provides a means of breaking rank, and
I
thus, the grounds for competitive cooperation.
Notes
jl. See, for instance, Robert Wess’s "Frank Lentricchia’s
' Criticism and Social Change: The Literary Intellectual as
‘ Pragmatic Humanist," and Michael Sprinker’s review of
Eagleton’s Literary Theory: An Introduction.
2. See, for instance, Hayden White’s The Tropics of
Discourse. and Harold Bloom’s A Map of Misreading.
dnapter 2
Kenneth Burke and American Criticism in the 1920s
When we try to characterize in general terms the
quality of an age we also face the problem of identifying
the tangled relations between individual actors and the
culture in which they act. Global historical events often
I
(shape particular actions in ambiguous ways, if at all, and
i
Jare countered by the individual, idiosyncratic responses of
people to their more local situations. To describe or
define a person’s actions in terms of social context, to
locate or place them in a scene, means identifying them in
terms of something else. Such a strategic move is, says
Burke, an "alchemic moment" (GM 24), because it makes
something new out of disparate elements. To avoid
contextual definition because it faces this paradox,
however, is to abandon our desire for seeing the products o
action as having social purpose (GM 26). Generalizations
about social attitudes usually do not apply neatly in
individual cases, but we still rely on them.
Historical generalizations have heuristic value because;
they act as filters, enabling insight by directing attention
f
to the scenic factors that do motivate individual acts. To ’
illuminate Kenneth Burke against the backdrop of American ;
criticism in the 1920s, and to move from there to a j
consideration of his own critical activity, we must first
icast the cultural scene, i.e. broaden historical scope by
jmaking reference to ideas--the "superstructure"— that shaped,
I
jthe methodology and attitudes of writers and critics of the
'period. We can then translate situational terms into
individual terms and thereby transcend what Burke calls "too
ilocal a view of history" (GM 16). Such a move will be
^specially pivotal when we set Burke’s fiction in the
|Context of his life as a critic.
We view Burke initially as a Bohemian critic who joins
|the cultural conversation not as a pragmatist or
rhetorician, but as an auto-didact ranging from discipline
jto discipline to find a suitable stance from which to
.disseminate his ideas.
I
i
i
I
i
I. The Critical Scenery. 1920-1930: The Rise of an American
*
Counter-Culture
j
I The most notable physical "move" Burke makes during the
1920s is to the New Jersey countryside— his attempt to
pursue the life of the "agro-bohemian" ("Kenneth Burke and
Malcolm Cowley: A Conversation" 190). As he would put it
some 40 years later, New York City had become for him "that
i
hateful traffic-belching squandering of power atop the tidal
!
swamps" (LASA 286). It was a spiritual relocation for
1
Burke, who, even at the time, felt it impossible to live
life as a "bohemian among bohemians" in Greenwich Village.
And though Burke returned to New York frequently to do his
j
work for The Dial, spending winters in the city, rural life
helpd him maintain the alternative perspective from which to
j
jview American society. As he wrote to Cowley in 1922, "We
(
are, perhaps, the back-to-the-soil movement in American
'letters, although we are involved in a search for root
I
1
rather than for sentiment; not for purification & la
Rousseau, but for good sturdy Sitzfleisch" (SC June 1,
*1922) .
j By 1920 Burke, at 23, had already dropped out of Ohio
State and Columbia to pursue an intense course of self-study
I
and, as he wrote to Malcolm Cowley in 1918, "get a room in
New York and begin my existence as a Flaubert" (SC 56).
iDuring World War I, Burke had remained in the United States
j
on doctor’s orders while many of his friends— including his
jhigh school companions, Cowley and Matthew Josephson— left
I
l
jfor France to experience the excitement of Europe. Burke
; chose to live in a small apartment in Greenwich Village, an
^enclave of writers, artists, and critics preoccupying
I
jthemselves with critiques of capitalism, war-time politics,
! i
unrestrained industrialization, and urban injustice. On the
71
one hand, Greenwich Village--with its bevy of beer joints,
book houses, feminists, and young radicals--helped spearhead;
jthe revolution in manners, morals, and criticism that took
I
|
place in the 1920s (Munson 71). On the other hand, Burke
i
•recognized that though Bohemian life in the Village helped
I
i
one initiate positive critiques of American culture, as a
Counter-culture, Villagers too easily transformed radical
critique into the kind of institutionalized hegemony it
t
sought to counteract. Nevertheless, Burke’s experience in
»
i
Greenwich Village helped him bring to a focus one of the
most basic tensions in American life at the time— that
between agrarian and urban life. That Bohemian life had
become too thoroughly institutionalized itself prompted his
effort to avoid this recrudescence of urbanism. To unify
j
opposites, Burke became a self-appointed "agro-bohemian."
Lewis Mumford referred in 1922 to the city as "an
environment which the jerry-builder, the real-estate
speculator, the paving contractor have largely created" (3).
(
I
Between 1900 and 1930 the urban population of the United
I
I
Btates more than doubled, while the rural population rose
only 15%. This expansion occurred so quickly that "In
building our cities," Mumford observed, "we have deflowered
a wilderness" (3). (The number of factory workers had
reached an all-time high in 1920.) On the one hand, he put
it, there was the attempt to "make a genuine culture out of
!
industrialism" (12). This new "culture" was a "reaction
72
i
against the uncouth and barren countryside that was skinned,
rather than cultivated, by the restless, individualistic, ;
self-assertive American pioneer" (Mumford 17). On the other
i
hand, there was the desire to establish "genuine regional
cultures [like Greenwich Village’s] to take the place of a
pseudo-national culture" (Mumford 19), the latter a culture
that had, in the interest of efficient industrialism,
brought the "feral" quality of the regionalism to the
t
metropolis and left its humane qualities behind (Mumford 19-
20). Greenwich Villagers attempted to transform urban
i
culture into a tolerable proposition. A "seedbed of the
i
1920s"--as Gorham B. Munson has called it--Greenwich Village
was, for Burke and others, a temporary retreat within the
city to which writers could flee and 'from which they could
I
counteract runaway industrialism with spirited reassessments
of criticism’s place in American civilization.
Many of the Villagers were educated in Ivy League
schools like Columbia, Harvard, and Yale, colleges that
I
contributed, with their emphasis on European traditions, to
jthe dualism that had uprooted a generation of students from
jtheir largely rural backgrounds. In Exile’s Return, a
•literary history of this "youngest generation," Malcolm
I
Cowley points out that for himself and Burke, as well as for
I
others like them, American education had been alienating:
i
,"I feel that our whole training was involuntarily directed
I
toward destroying whatever roots we had in the soil, toward
73
eradicating our local and regional peculiarities, toward
making us homeless citizens of the world" (11). Higher
education did not prepare people for citizenship or for an
industry or profession essential to common life (11).
I
[Instead, Cowley argues, students had learned to live in the
Jimmaterial world of scholarship, where "everything must be
refined by time and distance, by theory and research,^until
it loses its own special qualities, its life, and is
transformed into the dead material of culture" (12). For
!
these reasons and because Columbia would not let him take
graduate courses in Latin, Burke dropped out to pursue his
i
self-designed course of study, which included learning the
^classical languages, translating (for practice) such works
as Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, and acquainting himself
iWith the philosophical tradition that informed American
letters.
j The institutional coercion Cowley describes led young
jwriters to feel the alienation from urban life and the
jlonging for rural life that Burke would heed in 1921 and
I
would later be popularized by T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land
in 1922.1 Having been steeped in the appreciation of
I
I
(European culture, says Cowley,
| We felt that the world was rigorously controlled
j by scientific laws of which we had no grasp, that
i our lives were directed by Puritan standards that
| were not our own, that society in general was
i terribly secure, unexciting, middle class, a vast
| reflection of the families from which we came.
Society obeyed the impersonal law of progress.
74
Cities expanded relentlessly year by year. (19-
20)
Such impersonalization led those people interested in
jbecoming writers to feel that literature was "living in the
Ishadow of its great past" (19), and that all avenues of
I
^expression had been exhausted.
! The importance of "place" in Burke’s life and work is
!
underscored by his "escape" from Greenwich Village and his
return to the rural life. He moved in 1921 to Monson,
Maine, and eventually settled in Andover, New Jersey, on the
small farm where he has since lived most of his life. Burke
|
wrote to Cowley in 1921 that "as usual when returning to the
Icountry, my life is being lived in facts, healthy but
!
without concatenation" (SC April 18, 1921). His move to the
jcountry was a gesture of defiance toward those who had in
^Greenwich Village condemned American life and then, rather
j
ithan acting to improve their situation, left for Europe:
America I am coming to look upon as a
responsibility. . . . I must point out that the
country is what we make of it. We cannot move out
i magnificently like Stearns;2 for such a gesture
j leaves us with nothing but yammering. Stearns 1
will never see an inch farther. He has made a
yammer out of transplanting the body. (SC June 1, .
1922)
Burke, despite moving to the country, retained the
jsensibility he had gained in Greenwich Village; in fact, New
I
I
York remained his workplace for many years. But to him city
I
culture was pernicious in that it encouraged people to view
society as a repressive proposition— as hegemonic and
75
pervasive, not amenable to constructive critique because it
was perceived as a collection of indisputable facts made
i
negative because of idealistic notions of what America ought
ito be. For Burke, it was therapeutic to view American
I
'culture not as subject matter but as a symbol with greater
j
scope. As he put it to Cowley, "There is society, and there
are the tides, and I want to see both from the standpoint of
art forms. . . . I insist that America is, for our less
idealistic purposes, simply the sum of Mrs. Blosney and
Howard Slothwell, et all [sic]" (SC Feb. 8, 1923).3 In his
review of Burke’s early fiction, William Carlos Williams
shared Burke’s sensibility and expressed it more succinctly
[
in calling for greater attention to the local:
| From the shapes of men’s lives imparted by the
places where they have experience, good writing
springs. One does not have to be uninformed, to
j consort with cows. One has to learn what the
| meaning of the local is, for universal purposes.
The local is the only thing that is universal.
(CRKB 16).
For Williams and for Burke, "place"--not cultural
i
inoculation— was the source of healthy sensibility.
I Exile’s Return. Cowley’s portrait of the displaced
I
artist, has to a large extent shaped our present conception
I
of the psychological orientation of writers toward America
during the 1920s. And because Burke himself had a
significant influence on Cowley, both as a subject of this
book and Cowley’s closest critic, Exile’s Return bears a
closer look. Cowley describes these writers as the "lost
76
generation,” borrowing the phrase from Gertrude Stein, who
i
had used it to chastise Hemingway and his drunken friends at
(one of her soirees in Paris in the early 1920s.4 The slogan
proclaimed, in Cowley’s usage, "[our] feeling of separation
j
ifrom older writers and of kinship with one another" (4).
i
^Cowley challenges the more popular view that this "youngest
generation of writers" was a bunch of drunken rabble-rousers
i
with no morals to speak of and little concern for rigorous
inquiry— the view advanced at times by critics of Ernest
Hemingway and Sinclair Lewis.5 As the frame for
I
understanding their feelings of alienation, it bonded
I
f
writers who had suffered through an adventure that Cowley
describes in four general stages. The first stage was, as I
i
have already mentioned, the feeling of detachment from one’s
native background encouraged by American education. The
i
‘ second stage was expatriation; many writers went to Europe
■at the outset of World War I to enlist in the ambulance
corps of foreign armies (mostly France’s and Italy’s).
!(Burke, reluctant at first, defiantly stayed in America.)
i
The third stage occurred when these writers returned home,
ho longer physical exiles but exiles in spirit, feeling that
somehow they had changed considerably while America had
'remained in the same state of disarray as when they had
left. (Gorham Munson recalls stepping off a train in New
York to meet Burke in 1922 and exclaiming, "Not much like
i
Paris," to which Burke reportedly agreed "glumly" (166).)
(The fourth stage marked a renewed vigor and belief that
I,
jindividuals could make a difference. By the onset of the
Depression, writers started to express their discontent and
i
!alienation by actively committing themselves to political
|
jand social causes (Cowley 289-91). (By the start of the
1930s, Burke and Cowley had identified themselves as
t
I
socialists and joined forces with the burgeoning Marxist
movement.)
j The disillusionment Cowley and his group felt was
I
characterized in its early stages— between 1915 and 1920— by
j a love of paradox. A good writer was someone who had the
t
ability to "say what was not expected, to fool one’s
audience" (21). Cowley, Burke, and others developed what
[they called a Theory of Convolutions, a process of
outwitting the audience by anticipating its expectations and
I
'subsequently frustrating them. The process was capable of
‘ indefinite extension, its sole purpose being to stay one
step ahead of everyone else. This love of paradox became
jthe standard Burke and Cowley used to judge writers: "If
jthey turned platitudes upside down, showed the damage
Jwrought by virtue, made heroes of their villains— then they
J
jWere ’moderns’; they deserved our respect" (Cowley 20).
Though writers such as Congreve, Ibsen, Strindberg,
Schnitzler, Dostoevsky, and Flaubert occasionally came into
favor, few were popular long enough to serve as models who
might help establish a literary tradition and thereby give
78
young writers a sense of attachment to their past. The
i
Consequence, says Cowley, was confusion and loss of
identity, and the adoption of a pseudo-intellectual carpe
Idiem:
The generation belonged to a period of transition
from values already fixed to values that had to be
created. Its members began by writing for
[ magazines with names like transition. Broom (to
i make a clean sweep of it), 1924. This Quarter
| (existing in the pure present), S^N. Secession.
They were seceding from the old and yet could
j adhere to nothing new. (9)
With no acceptable literary or critical traditions to work
i
:from, some writers turned to the art and ideas of Europe,
I
|which were by many critical accounts (e.g. those of H.L.
i
Mencken, T.S. Eliot, and Harold Stearns) far superior to
anything produced by Americans. Some went to Paris and
i
i
looked to the Dadaists— a group that, according to Cowley,
I
.tried to "outdo the world in its lunacy" (139). By the mid-
|l920s, however, many of the exiles returned from Europe,
having found it in many ways as decadent, even more so, than
life in the United States.
! Cowley’s account of the 1920s and the psychology of the
|
writer during this period over-dramatizes at times the
i
|"lostness" of his generation and the pattern their life
^followed, as Matthew Josephson (in Life among the
Surrealists) and Daniel Aaron (in "Literary Scenes and
Literary Movements, 1910-1945") anxiously point out in their
jown histories. Many writers did not leave for Europe during
79
or immediately after the war, though they might have wanted
jto. Many stayed home and fought to identify themselves as
writers and critics despite the persistent obstacles of
j
poverty and censors, and amid the post-war nationalism,
i
racism, and conservatism typified by the rise of the Ku Klux
I
j
Klan and the Immigration Acts of 1921 and 1924. Burke was
bne of those writers who faced this struggle with
i
conviction— as someone who had longed to go to France, but
i
I
[instead opted for bringing the best of French culture to the
I
^nited States as a corrective, namely through the writings
of Gustave Flaubert and Remy de Gourmont. Burke’s writing
t
in the 1920s is not so much lost as it is desperate,
I
I
combative, and skeptical.®
The literary magazine was another important feature of
I
'the critical scenery during the 1920s that should be noted,
not only because the tremendous activity in the journals
i
t
‘ complicates Cowley’s characterization of post-war writers as
["lost” but also because Burke’s career as a critic blossomed
I
[when he began as an editor at The Dial in 1922. At the
[start of the 1920s there was a slew of fugitive magazines
[operating out of New York. By many accounts, The Dial was
the most respected of these in literary circles. The Dial,
along with other journals of its kind, significantly shaped
,the literary conversations of the 1920s. It was noted for
its effort "to combine international modernism with the
I
native American strain" (Aaron 744). The Dial’s editors,
Scofield Thayer, J.S. Watson,7 and later, Marianne Moore,
felt that the magazine should welcome the "aesthetic and
ideological differences of their contributors" (Aaron 744).
This presentation and appreciation of alternative
perspectives was evident by the list of people receiving the
jannual Dial award: Sherwood Anderson, T.S. Eliot, Van Wyck
Brooks, Marianne Moore, e.e. cummings, William Carlos
Williams, Ezra Pound, and in 1929--The Dial’s final year of
publication--Burke. The Dial published formalist innovators
i
jin poetry and prose, cultural critics formulating or
Idisinheriting literary traditions, and reproduced the
'experimental work of new sculptors and painters. It
!
annually reviewed hundreds of books and journals. The
iresult was a collage of criticism and literature to which
jBurke was especially suited. In 1929, the last year of its
existence, The Dial announced that Burke was the recipient
j
jof its award, noting that he, perhaps more than any other
I
writer of the time had represented its ideals:
I
i It is difficult to think about art we are told,
where there is a great deal of noise, or to talk
of it to those who are inattentive. Mr. Burke
has, however, without discovering a retreat for
himself, devoted himself uninterruptedly to
writing and to so good purpose that word of his
service will come to the reading public in no
' sense as news. Nor in his studies has one art
! starved another. ("Announcement" Jan. 1929)
I
The inter-disciplinary nature of The Dial both reflected and
shaped Burke’s career in remarkable ways. In fact, as he
isays in his preface to "The Complete White Oxen," the
entrance of The Dial into his life was "almost as momentous
a moment as the act, or accident, of being born" (CWO xi).
The magazine gave him the opportunity to place his poetry
Jand fiction alongside his critical theory, to multiply the
critical perspectives available to the artist and the
critic.
i
i
II. Critical Stances: Nationalism* Impressionism, and
| Aestheticism
At the time of Burke’s entrance into the scene,
American criticism had for some time been experiencing the
l
:same dissociation from its literary past that also plagued
!
young writers in the 1920s, Burke actively participated in
jthe debate over the need to establish a specifically
American literature and to properly place the European
jtradition within it, participating frequently in the turmoil
I
^stimulated in the journals and in a regular correspondence
with Cowley.
Many of the critical debates focused upon the proper
relationships among art, criticism, and culture. The debate
was one that Thoreau, Emerson, and Whitman had called for
many years earlier,8 and that Burke criticized throughout
the 1920s. The intellectual’s role in society was to
I
initiate and sustain a dialogue about national identity.
American criticism was the primary agency for identifying
I
the culture’s health and its potential for supplying the
82
richness and diversity necessary for writers to enliven the
dialogue initiated by critics like Thoreau and Emerson.
Such cultural criticism was especially prevalent during the
1920s. V.L. Parrinaton’s Main Currents in American Thought
(1927-1930), for example, grappled with the political,
economic, and social development of literature in America,
I
[rather than with a narrower belletristic approach (iii).
■Further, Parrington announced that his study was "fixed by
(forces that are anterior to literary schools and movements,
r
creating the body of ideas from which literary culture
[eventually springs" (iii). In other words, Parrington
I
sought to give a full account of the American literary
[tradition without distorting his portrait with critical
l
[theorizing. His apprehension arises from a heated critical
?debate--fueled in part by Van Wyck Brooks’ America’s Coming-
i
of-Age (1915)— over the need to establish sound and
jpractical methods of scholarship, to employ critical skills
ithat would be attentive to the impact culture had on the
i
[literary imagination of American writers. The main point
was this: too many critics intellectualized art with
abstract theories designed exclusively to further a certain
Iworld view. Parrington*s critical quest was to ground the
!
I
[literary past in a universal aesthetic that would help
[stabilize a rich and healthy national culture.
J American criticism also faced a disciplinary crisis
during the 1920s that involved more than arguments over
methodology; the problem was cultural as well, proceeding
from widespread insecurity about national identity. One of
jthe more important and controversial texts of the time was
Harold Stearns’s anthology Civilization in the United
i
States: An Inquiry by Thirty Americans.9 Published in
*
1922, it included essays by Lewis Mumford, H.L. Mencken,
*
J.E. Spingarn, Van Wyck Brooks, Conrad Aiken, Ring Lardner,
and many other New York intellectuals. Civilization in the
I
United States was the "deliberate and organized outgrowth of
the common efforts of like-minded men and women to see the
problem of modern American civilization as a whole" (Stearns
J
i
iii). Each essayist wrote on a particular segment of
American life, e.g. "The Literary Life," "The City," "The
Family," "Racial Minorities," and so on. The group adopted
a "unity of approach and attack" with these three
contentions: 1) in almost every branch of American life
■there is a sharp dichotomy between preaching and practice
i
|(vi); 2) whatever else American civilization is, it is not
Anglo-Saxon, and that genuine nationalistic self-
iconsciousness is not possible as long as certain financial
'and social minorities argue that the United States is still
an English Colony (vii); and 3) the most moving and pathetic
fact in the social life of America today is emotional and
^aesthetic starvation (vii). Each of the contributors to the
volume had to be "good natured," an American citizen, and
not a professional propagandist (iv-v). Immediately after
84
jits release, the book received harsh reviews, particularly
I
•because of its vehement tone and ideological uniformity (the
jwriters were, recall, "like-minded" in their attachment to
'European culture and their dislike for American society; the
unity of their attack was consistent and brutal). Yet it
I
clearly captured one predominant perspective on American
life (Gorham Munson condemns the book because it "suggests
I
I
.little that is not already obvious" (158)). Basically,
America suffered from moral and intellectual degeneration, a
t
'viewpoint frequently repeated since Thoreau.
I Two of the less caustic essays in this collection were
Van Wyck Brooks’ "The Literary Life," and Joel E. Spingarn’s
l"Scholarship and Criticism." A closer look at each of them
I
'here helps characterize the tenor of the popular feeling
that American criticism was not fulfilling its social role
I
jand that American literary efforts, likewise, were
i
unimaginative and idiosyncratic. Both polemics set the
i
stage for Burke’s emergence as a pragmatist, in the Jamesian
sense, the critic’s critic whose aim is amelioration rather
than conquest.
To Van Wyck Brooks in 1922, America was notable for
i
I
;"the singular impotence of its creative spirit" (179). A
|
[lack of talent, he argues, was not the problem; rather, it
jwas "that so little of this talent succeeds in effectuating
1
itself" (179). The writer’s creative spirit was choked by
I
. too little resistance to conventions and not enough trust in
85
ithe integrity of the imagination (182), two conditions
(resulting from the fact that the American writer "has been
I
insufficiently equipped, stimulated, nourished by the
society into which he has been born (183). Stirred by
competitive impulses and "the traditional drag . . . in the
(direction of the practical," even potentially good writers
i
jhad to forsake creativity for the opportunity of "money-
jgathering" (186). The conditions were different in Europe,
i
IBrooks argues, where the writer worked from a great and
i
well-established tradition, and could earn a respectable
I
r
^living from generous public support. Brooks closes his
argument with some tentative optimism:
I
| in more than one sense the times are favourable
i [sic]. The closing of the frontier seems to
j promise for this country an intenser life than it
has known before; a large element of the younger
generation, estranged from the present order,
] exists in a state of ferment that renders it
highly susceptible to new ideas; the country
| literally swarms with half-artists . . . who have
| ceased to conform to the law of the tribe but who
I have not accepted the discipline of their own
j individual spirits. (197)
In 1922 the climate was favorable for heightening
iconsciousness of the fundamental role played by literature
i
in the formation of national character. The rebellious
"youngest generation" had found itself— after the ravages of
t
'World War I— eager to begin a focused critique of the
literary tradition. Brooks’s plea was for Nationalism—
i
I
^criticism that would shape the literary scene for the sake
■of stabilizing an identifiable American form. Burke, as
86
will be discussed more thoroughly in what follows, shares
Brooks’s assessment of the cultural scene, but insists that
t
the absolutist position calling for a uniquely and
i
I
isolationist American literature was much too separatist in
its rejection of European forms. For Burke, even at this
early stage, the main ideal of criticism is, as he put it
later in The Philosophy of Literary Form, to use all that is
there to use (PLF 23).
• Some of the responsibility for shaping American
identity fell to the critics because they were responsible,
according to Spingarn, for judging the aesthetic value of
i
i
art and for establishing a solid literary tradition based
upon refined "imaginative sympathy," or universal standards
of taste (100). Unfortunately, says Spingarn, American
criticism "suffers from a want of philosophic insight and
precision. It has neither inherited nor created a tradition
i
of aesthetic thought" (99). Instead, critics sought morals,
i
or economic theories, or national spirit, but not art (101).
The three predominant attitudes toward literature among
^American critics such as the New Humanists Paul Elmer More
|and Irving Babbitt, says Spingarn, were these: 1) literature
i
I
jWas a moral influence; 2) literature was the most effective
|tool for delivering a world view; and 3) literature was an
i
lexternal thing, a complex of rhythms, charm, and beauty
without inner content, or mere theatrical effectiveness (the
"art for art’s sake" view) (101-02). The pernicious effect
of this reduction of art from the imaginative to the
j
everyday world exposed the naivete in viewing one’s
|
criticism as freely determined. The critic’s morals and
philosophy all too often preempted or rigidly determined
[judgment. To Spingarn, art was a creation of the
I
imagination and not a product of rational (i.e. moral or
f
philosophical) thought. He condemned "intellectualist
criticism" because it was "based on the conception that art
is a product of thought rather than of imagination, and that
the creative fantasy of the artist can be limited and judged
i
by the critic’s preconceived theories" (108).10 The
i
aesthetic judgments of the critic, Spingarn reasserted,
1
ought to be based on the universal appeals of beauty and the
I
sublime. He purposely avoids detailing what criteria should
be used for making these judgments, on the premise that such
jstandards would predetermine the aesthetic response and
constrain the critic’s imaginative faculties.
|
j As we will see when we discuss his concepts of the
psychology of form and the psychology of information, Burke
|
^distrusts impressionistic criticism like Spingarn’s because
!
,it avoids the critical formulation of aesthetic principles,
1
which to Burke is absolutely necessary for understanding the
dynamics of literary appeal. Spingarn*s argument is one in
,a long line of criticism that, paradoxically, postures as
i
criticism that is "anti-criticism,"11 or if that term seems
too harsh, "anti-theory." From such a perspective, the
critic’s job, as critic, is to guide readers through the
often complicated processes at work in literature, not to
l
•formulate general principles of interpretation, but to
explain how meaning is achieved in the individual case. The
^critic’s job, as teacher, is to present examples of good and
I
jbad literature in the hopes of refining the taste of
I
inexperienced readers. Literature represents a more
refined, spiritual form of knowledge that technical details,
i
I
historical backgrounds, and moral standards only serve to
corrupt. (From the anti-theorist’s point of view, the
f
theoretical critic is "anti-literature.") Anti-criticism
expresses the belief that literature’s meaning is not
expressed via criticism, but via literature itself, through
'the artist’s imaginative use of concrete language, and is
i
realized in the reader’s mind only when he or she possesses
taste. Literature, for Spingarn and other anti-critics, is
!thus the externalization of taste. Cowley, as I will
i
^discuss below, shares this view, and his arguments with
'Burke over the proper method of criticism make it even more
evident that there were radically divergent conceptions of
criticism present at the time.
! Brooks and Spingarn represent only two sides of the
critical debate active during the 1920s. Parrington's
thorough rendering of the American literary tradition
opposes Brooks’s belief that no such tradition existed.
Spingarn’s position, though it may have been popular, is
Similarly countered by critics like Burke in America and by
‘ I.A. Richards in England. (In Principles of Literary
Criticism, for instance, Richards sets out methodically to
construct an aesthetic with explicit principles for judging
[aesthetic value.) Various "schools" competed with anti
critics and the young aesthetes, including the Imagists (led
by Ezra Pound), the Socialists (led by Floyd Dell and
|
Michael Gold), the New Humanists (led by Paul Elmer More and
Irving Babbitt), and cultural critics (led by Van Wyck
I
Brooks, H.L. Mencken, and Waldo Frank).
Ill. Burke’s Correspondence with Malcolm Cowley
i
Amid such a cacophony of voices, it was understandably
difficult to distinguish one’s own position. Burke and
|
Cowley joined the critical debates in the 1920s with zeal
I
'nevertheless. Their dialogue sharpens many of the
|
differences among the competing critical positions of the
itimes. And the Burke-Cowley correspondence is remarkable,
I
jof course, for its longevity— they began writing to each
I
[other regularly in 1916 and continued into the eighties,
but it also registers the impact on two agile minds of some
jof the central problems facing American criticism. The
I
correspondence does not merely record the fluctuating
concerns of criticism at-large; rather, it becomes one of
l
|the primary vehicles for each writer to shape his own
critical methodology by playing ideas off the other. As
90
Paul Jay puts it, "The correspondence contains a kind of
unrelenting self-analysis and impassioned dialogue, the kind
that can remind us how writing both shapes and sustains the
jvery self who writes" (SC viii). The Burke-Cowley dialogue
has added relevance for this study because it helps us
understand the "richly personal" aspect of Burke’s critical
I
writing that Hayden White notes has made his work
i
problematic for critics. As Gregory and Paul Jay have
j -
i
observed, Burke’s "examinations of motives, purposes,
I
attitudes, and reorientation— are public attempts to work
i
out in a social theory contradictions he is experiencing in
his own life" ("Burke Re-Marx" 171). The correspondence
j
brings to light what some of these contradictions are, and
i
shows Burke working through them in the dialectic he and
i
Cowley began in 1916.
j
j The correspondence has four major themes that I want to
i
elucidate here, none of which is entirely exclusive of the
'other three. One theme involves the act of self-
identification that I have just mentioned. The second theme
extends the debate to the pragmatic role of criticism, an
jissue Burke and Cowley argued vigorously and one that also
pitted Impressionists and cultural critics against each
l
!
1
jother. The third theme focuses on the writers’ attempts to
iformulate critical perspectives on modernism and to develop
f
an approach to literature that neither bowed to the idealism
of the "art for art’s sake" view, nor capitulated to the
91
popular demand for a science of aesthetics. The fourth
theme addresses some of the issues presented in the Stearns
I
collection and shows the two writers arguing the benefits of
I
j
identifying a uniquely American literary tradition and the
i
critic's responsibility to validate it.
Even by 1917 the correspondence had become vitally
important to both men. Burke, in the fatherly tone that
creeps into many of his letters, complains to Cowley that,
I
"So far I have been like a pipe blowing into the ocean; a
good simile except in so far as it makes you the ocean. I
pour out, pour out, and after that, pour out, but nothing
comes back. . . . I might as well write letters to myself
like one of my heroes" (SC Jan. 6, 1918). At the time Burke
was discovering Flaubert through his letters, which for
Burke were models of healthy correspondence: "he [Flaubert]
i
mustn’t have written a dozen letters without a discussion of
his work, and from the wording of his correspondence he was
^evidently answering answers, which must make life worth
i
living" (SC Jan. 16, 1918). Cowley appreciated the
correspondence as well, despite occasional lapses in
j
jregularity, mostly because Burke, in his inimitably caustic
way, helped him restrain his tendency to completely give
!
himself over to momentary but powerful critical movements,
such as the Dadaist "experiment" in the early 1920s. (It is
I
1
to Cowley’s credit that he kept at the correspondence in
spite of Burke’s combativeness.)
92
The dialogue demonstrates the necessity of attaching
one’s self to another’s word for the sake of stabilizing an
■identity. In a period of "noise," as The Dial had put it,
the correspondence was the agency of self-identification.
Burke would declare to Cowley, "I am becoming a philosopher"
(SC Nov. 11, 1916), that he was a "half-socialist" (SC July
I
20, 1917), and later, that "Bohemianism has become a big
word in my vocabulary" (SC Feb. 8, 1927), as he sought terms
I
for describing his lot in life. In 1921 Burke cast himself
in a role that would shape the rest of his career; the scene
was staged by this discovery:
j I know nothing of life without a war. You could
say that my eyes opened, that is, in high school,
about the time of the advance through Belgium.
| Since then I have graduated from high school, been
to two colleges, permanently renounced writing
i four or five times, married, labored, rested,
bummed, ein Kind gekriegt, laid the cornerstone of
; my career, etc., ad inf., and all in a belligerent
| world. (SC Aug. 28, 1921)
!
Burke began to realize that despite business-as-usual at
home, the conditions of war had sustained attitudes in him
i
jthat colored his view toward all human relations.
Meanwhile, many of Burke’s friends had seen firsthand the
jconsequences of war. Yet even for Cowley it was as if the
I
War had been something to repress and not to connect to the
business of criticism:
i
: I have never succeeded in intellectualizing. It
! is like the French and German armies during the
war; the French, even after four years, never
! succeeded in regarding the war as something
permanent; they lived in makeshift hovels and
complained because the roof leaked; the Germans
built concrete palaces. (SC Nov. 27, 1922)
I
Burke intellectualized both war and criticism. In fact, he
i
felt especially suited for making connections between the
two. As he puts it, he had a penchant for "belligerency":
"Selfish, unpatriotic, with poor eyes and defective hearing,
treacherous to any employer, I could be depended upon in war
times to attain complete florescence" (SC Aug. 28, 1921).
Burke’s battle, however, was not fought as a critic allied
with strictly nationalistic pursuits. Rather, and this
i
becomes even more pronounced by the time he writes A
i
I
Rhetoric of Motives, he very early in his career adopts a
"frame of acceptance" derived from the perpetual state of
I
war that surrounded him. A frame of acceptance, he writes
jin 1937, is the "system of meanings by which a thinking man
gauges the historical situation and adopts a role with
.relation to it" (ATH 5). Burke’s realization that he and
Cowley were of a generation that knew little of peace made
his later excursions into "human relations in general" a
;matter of formulating the principles whereby people resort
[to war, which he deemed in A Rhetoric of Motives, a "special
I
lease of peace" (20; Burke’s italics), and then proposing a
i
cure whereby people would learn to recognize the role of
rhetoric in inducing cooperation and to protect themselves
ifrom the magical concoctions of those who would exploit our
i
'natural desire to identify ourselves with others (RM 263).
94
Cowley would often rejoin with identifications of his
own. The most problematic for him was his association with
Jthe Dadaists in Paris during the years immediately following
World War I. In 1923 Cowley declared himself "officially a
Dada" (SC Feb. 8, 1923). To Cowley, Dadaism was the
I
"negation of all motives for writing, such as the Desire for
|
Expression, the Will to Create, the Wish to Aid. A Dada has
|
only one legitimate excuse for writing: because he wants to,
i
because it amuses him" (SC Feb. 8, 1923). The Dadaists
i
|
Wrote manifestoes as "practical jokes." Cowley imagines
writing, for example, "An Open Letter to the Postmaster
General on the Censorship, in which I admit the right to
i
censor, point out how dangerous my opinions are, and demand
why I am not suppressed" (SC June 29, 1923). While Cowley
I
pursued this Dada path, Burke wrote back to him that he
wanted no part of the Dada experiment. To Burke, there were
i"no first-rate Dadaists" because though they paraded a
i
i
!"write-as-you-please" philosophy none of them did so (SC
j
Jan. 18, 1923). Burke felt the Dadaists sold out to their
[desire for lucidity, that while renouncing the absurdities
I
jof public life, they wrote "city products" (SC Jan. 18,
;1923). Dadaists failed to pursue the implications of their
'alterity. Cowley, perhaps persuaded by Burke’s arguments,
eventually renounced his discipleship, and 1933 had come to
see Dada as "the logical and illogical extreme of the
religion-of-art movement" (SC June 13, 1933). Cowley’s Dada
phase did, however, exert its influence on both himself and
j
Burke— particularly in their discussions of pragmatism and
its function as a critical attitude.
f
I
j In William James’s formulation, pragmatism refers to
the act of pursuing the implications of one's critical
i
stance. The Jamesian pragmatist interprets principles, or
critical positions, by tracing their respective practical
consequences (42), In Burke’s view, pragmatist philosophies
"are generated by the featuring of the term Agency,” and
3
begin with the assumption that every philosophy "announces
some view of human ends, and will require a corresponding
i
doctrine of means" (GM 275). Burke’s argument with Cowley
over the means of writing criticism help him formulate early
l
in his career a critical stance emphasizing that "[w]e can
only build on OUR OWN NEW INTERPRETATIONS of past precepts"
3 ( SC Dec. 26, 1921; Burke's emphasis). Pragmatism, as a
i
method of interpreting interpretations, allies itself with
^rhetoric in Burke's view, because both would have us
Jacknowledge that "there is no ultimate element on which a
jcritical system can be based" (SC Feb. 20, 1922).
i In discussing the pragmatic method, James's focus is
j
lUpon our ideas of objects in general and the means of
jrepresenting them in language. Burke would have us make the
'object of study criticism itself; and the terminology most
useful for such an inquiry may be borrowed from rhetoric,
'since criticism is not, or should not be, the elaboration of
96 .
absolutes in art via pure theory. For Burke, "a man makes ;
principles of his desires ; and then follows these principles ,
I :
instead of following the desires" (SC Oct. 30, 1921).
Criticism is a game of thrust-and-parry— "we must all
vituperate and deify, and the one with the cleverest tricks
i
wins" (SC Feb. 20, 1922). An aesthetic is the formal
k
j
classification of desires— a formalization both rhetorical
|
and pragmatic since a system of aesthetics elaborates the
I
sensations and reactions we can expect objects to liberate.
|
j Burke’s critique of aesthetics as both pragmatic and
i
rhetorical come to light when he and Cowley discuss the
means of criticism in 1921. Cowley was still in France, and
l
I
Burke had begun formulating some propositions about the
"inherent properties" of art, a category that for Burke did
i
not exclude criticism. To Burke at the time, "the one
f
f
property which literature possesses to the exclusion of all
I
I
other arts is that of ideological clarity" (SC Oct. 30,
{l921) .12 By this he meant that art "is always
i
|contemporaneous, that is, parallels the general complexion
i
of the times" (SC Oct. 30, 1921). Criticism should make
!
'evident this ideological clarity, either by noticing it in
literature or in its tendency to guide the critic’s own
discourse. Burke accuses Cowley of vagueness, of lacking
I
the requisite aesthetic principles which would help him
clarify literature’s representation of ideology. Cowley
had, argues Burke, disconnected writing from its scene by
97 !
failing to see the permanency of ideological warfare during
and after World War I.
Clarity, to Cowley, means something entirely different,
laving more to do with style than with ideological ,
representation. Cowley once had believed unintelligibility
to be a virtue that indicated abstract principles at work,
but realizes by 1922 that clarity derives instead from
[
perspicuity. Burke’s principles for assessing ideological
i
clarity obscured or repressed the clear meaning of
i
literature in the interest of furthering his own views. As
Cowley puts it to Burke, "You believe that a critic should
I
[judge a book, according to aesthetic laws which he
[formulates. In effect, you believe in using the book as a
text for an essay on Form. More modest, I believe in
(
defining a book" (SC Mar. 17, 1923). To Cowley, criticism
need not begin with complicated principles, and literature
itself employed techniques regardless of criticism’s
I
postulates about literary production:
We wish to be the priests each of our own little
sect, and each sect has its Rosicrucian secrets,
only to be revealed to the proselyte who has
passed through the seven stages of the novitiate.
Meanwhile the proselytes are too busy founding
little sects of their own. And literature remains
the art of conveying ideas and shows no
disposition to adopt Dada or Rosicrucianism.
I want instead to reduce everything to its
simplest terms, and to build up subtlety by the
opposition of simple statements. (SC Jan. 23,
1922)
i
98 ;
i
Cowley admonishes Burke for making criticism and literature i
mutually dependent acts. Burke differs, arguing
dogmatically that "art is the possession of the initiated,
that there are some who understand through creative taste,
and some who can be taught, while the great bulk of the
world remains as unsensitive to aesthetic values as an ape
i
does to a Cezanne" (SC Feb. 6, 1922). For Burke, the
i
formulation and enactment of reasoned aesthetic principles
make for better literature and criticism. The difference of
opinion here seems divided along the same lines that
kistinguish criticism from anti-criticism. Cowley does not
i
assume the role of anti-critic in the extreme here, but his
position does counter Burke’s argument for the
•intellectualization of art through criticism.
j
This argument also leads Cowley and Burke to consider
jfurther what critics mean when they say writing has clarity.
Cowley’s prose was distinguished from the start by its
readability; reviewers of his work, including Van Wyck
i
Brooks, found it "clear." Burke criticizes this praise
because to him Cowley’s "virtue of clarity," if indeed it
^was a virtue, resulted from the fact that his subject matter
I
Was not very complicated; and besides, Cowley’s writing,
I
Burke claims, is generally not really very clear anyway (SC
May 5, 1922). To be clear, Burke argues, criticism ought to
I
i
be reducible to an inevitable syllogism, a statement of
i
premises and a cogent conclusion from them: "Clarity is
L~
nothing other than a broad grasp of the issues involved.
And most of all it is opposed to latent assumptions.
Clarity means simply that implicit dogma is made explicit”
(SC May 5, 1922). When Cowley responds to Burke’s critique,
i
a fundamental difference between methods begins to emerge:
I
It was unjust for you to say that my subject
matter was not very complicated at most; it took
me ten days to de-complicate my subject matter.
Even at that I did not fully succeed, so that you
I were perfectly just when you said that the essay
| could not be reduced to one syllogism. What I
i succeeded in doing was to give such an illusion of
clarity that Brooks was taken in. (SC May 20,
1922)
Burke and Cowley it seems, at least at this early stage in
I
their careers, seek clarity very differently. Burke views
1
writing as the elucidation of principles, as strategies for
containing and then elaborating subject matter. (The
problem with the Dadaists was their failure to enact in
their writing the principles that identified them as a
i
group.) The interior logic of prose, Burke feels, is
I
imposed after the generation of details consistent with
i
first principles. Writing criticism and representing
!
•meaning follow the pragmatic method outlined by James
jbecause the acts require connecting one’s system of
(explanation to the object. Cowley’s statement that "it took
me ten days to de-complicate my subject matter" reveals his
;different view. The syllogism acts not as the generating
I
iprinciple, but must be induced from the evidence.
100
The difference between the two approaches is akin to
that between induction and deduction. Cowley’s method,
which he demonstrated consistently throughout his career,
was to reconstruct the process of induction for his readers
by re-creating the conditions which lead to the syllogisms,
I
historical generalizations, or cultural trends that inform
interpretations. Burke’s approach, on the other hand,
proceeds deductively from general principles--in a working
i
through of critical precepts to see what interpretations
arise. By 1933 the consequences of these different
approaches was clear to Burke: "fundamentally our
I
differences in emphasis, classification, etc. seem to derive
from the following initial or informing distinction in
i
purpose: You are trying to write an interpretation of
certain cultural trends; I am trying to write on the process
of interpretation" (SC June 16, 1933). Burke’s efforts to
formulate aesthetic principles, a task Cowley had no taste
|for, leads him to consider their implications to their end,
an activity that has repeatedly exposed him to charges of
solipsism. But in the same letter in 1933, Burke explains
the necessity of his approach:
i
; Surely someone has said, or will say, that the end
j of all criticism is the criticism of criticism.
! Thus one must try (if the criticism of
criticism he would write) to rehash the whole
j business of orientation, of imaginative and
i ideological symbolism, of "meanings" in their
double function of both guiding and misguiding us.
, One tries to find how meanings arise. (SC June 16,
1933)
101
Having begun the pursuit of meanings along the pragmatic
path set by James, Burke ends up evading the question of
I
literature’s substantiality and instead enacts a critique of
criticism itself.
The third theme in the correspondence centered on the
problem of critical taste. Burke and Cowley spent much of
I
their time in the 1920s debating the characteristics of
"modernism" and arguing for an aesthetic that would validate
at. In 1921 Burke stated his position: "It seems to me . .
I
; . that the art-process is much more interesting than any
i
work of art, and that art seen from a philosophic standpoint
i
begins to have more appeal than when seen from merely
i
artistic standpoints of excellence and interest" (SC Jan.
19, 1921) Burke was troubled somewhat by this philosophic
turn, writing a short time later that Carl Sprinchorn, like
Robert McAlmon and William Carlos Williams, "does not enjoy
bur weakness for definitions and fixations. He feels
jthings; but my joy does not really begin until I formulate
jthem" (SC June 26, 1921). He was not disheartened, however.
He admonished Cowley to recognize this attitude in him, and
asked that his short stories not be viewed as finished
I
"masterpieces" because "the finished masterpiece is like
Jconfetti thrown at a carnival, and looked at the day after.
So let us, sir, rather discuss the throwing of the confetti"
,(SC June 30, 1921). Cowley was reluctant and did not engage
Burke on this issue of artistic production at great length.
102
He did, however, become Burke’s sympathetic reader, someone
willing to apply Burke’s theoretical statements to his
! f iction. )
Cowley’s first concern was for developing a classical
definition of art, as in "Art is the creation of the
i
beautiful" and "Beauty is the object of art" (SC Jan. 23,
1922), but he later found that the two principles formed a
circle and were of no practical use. So instead he occupied
|
himself with attacks on the substitution of art for
*
i
religion, which he found too prevalent and touched with
I
ridicule (.SC Feb. 27, 1922). Burke took Cowley to mean that
i
"art should not mean to the lover of beauty what the Church
meant to the early Father" (SC Mar. 13, 1922). Cowley
i
objected to elitist notions of art, seeing formal aesthetics
jas the exertion of power over the individual response.
Burke disagreed vehemently, noting, "It is simply one of the
i
Tirst principles of being a human being that if one is
.vitally interested in something, he follows up the bent of
I )
his interest" (SC Mar. 13, 1922). While he was discouraged
[ i
jby the alienating effects of predetermined aesthetics,
Jcowley also knew that the view that literature’s "formal"
properties were the measure of its value was the dominant
jtrend in modern aesthetics (Kempf The Early Career of
Malcolm Cowley passim). His objections were publicly
i
.expressed in his Dial reviews, partly derived from his Dada
association, and partly from his distaste for Stearns and
103
■^hose who would judge American literature using aesthetic
principles formulated exclusively to validate a European
I
|
tradition. He defended his position to Burke thus:
Since when should subject matter undergo a priori
; definitions and limitation? What do you mean? . .
I . I ’m trying to formulate my instinctive
j reactions to the issue. . . . I haven’t swallowed
1 Dada hook and sinker; my instincts are classical
and intellectual; I’ll save my soul if it can be
saved. As you will save yours. . . . Abstrakten
form . . . Dinamik . . . rhythmus. (qtd. in Kempf,
Mar. 18, 1923)
Burke did not share Cowley’s apprehension about determinacy,
but gradually came to agree with him that the present
l
formalization of aesthetics was inadequate. Modernist
t
experiments, such as Eliot’s The Waste Land. Joyce’s
Ulysses. and Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer, called for the
redefinition of critical principles because extant notions
!
of realism could not account for their appeal.
i
t
' Rather than attacking modern aesthetics, as Cowley
often did, Burke set out on a project the aim of which was
to provide a "counter-structure." As early as 1922, nine
years before the eventual publication of Counter-Statement
!
he wrote,
j
! My solution is to attempt a more constructive type
j of criticism, not merely to attack the existing,
but to build up a counter-structure. . . . My
1 method now would be to minimize the attack and
; emphasize the counter-structure. Thus, I do not
modify my attitude, but modify my method. Tell
j me, is this lousy opportunizing? I do not think
1 so. The important thing is to round out one’s own
! conception of intellectual excellence, to develop
! a consistent and synthetic system of approach.
104
This can be done without growling. (SC May 5,
1922)
I
Burke’s desire to "develop a consistent and synthetic"
approach, a pragmatic capitulation to both the existent and
*
the possible in critical theory, would later be reaffirmed
!
in Counter-Statement as a "desire to develop an equilibrium
of his own, regardless of external resistances" (CS vii).
Such a desire was distinct from the "pamphleteer’s" effort
to establish critical equilibrium by "leaning as his age
leans, or in the direction opposite to his age" (CS vii).
The former approach, Burke’s "inquiry," becomes the means of
"transforming the contentious into the speculative" (CS.
I
yii). The critic should be more concerned with
I
reformulating rather than transmitting or debunking culture.
In Cowley, Burke found a receptive ear to his gestures
i
[toward redefining critical practice. Cowley shared Burke’s
rebellious attitude and essentially became his "receptive
i
•reader," the person disgruntled with modern aesthetics but
sympathetic toward alternative systematizations, the person
to whom Burke would write Counter-Statement. As we will see
when we later look at the mixed reviews of Counter-Statement
Burke was indeed touching sensitive nerves.
1 The fourth theme in the Burke-Cowley correspondence
i
focuses on Stearns’s Civilization in the United States, and
]
shows Cowley and Burke accusing each other of falling under
the spell cast by those critics trying to identify a
uniquely American literary tradition. In 1921 Burke shares
Spingarn’s opinion that America had not inherited or
generated a system of aesthetics; Burke tells Cowley— one
!
year before the Stearns book was published: "I am coming to
I
believe the ordinary person is absolutely unable to draw the
implications out of a thing at all; they take each poem or
story individually, with no sense of its correlation into a
general aesthetics" (SC Jan. 14, 1921). In "Two American
I
Poets" (1922, a review of Conrad Aiken’s Priapus and the
Pool and Carl Sandburg’s Slabs of the Sunburnt West). Cowley
seems to agree, concluding that this failure has much to do
with the fact that "there is no poetry so deeply rooted in
I
I
our soil and our tradition that a foreigner can never fully
understand it... . America remains a thing seen and not a
manner of seeing" (567). But later Cowley has a change of
I
r
heart. By 1923, "America in the distance begins to loom up
i
as a land of promise, something barbaric and decorative and
[rich" (SC Jan. 6, 1923). Burke takes issue with both views
I
because he feels they waver on the question of whether
America, as a "place," nurtures good literature, which for
I
i
'him was an unnecessary limitation of scope-one that he
claims Cowley learns from Stearns (.SC Jan. 18, 1923). Burke
!
■voices his opinion most succinctly (and most Burke-like) in
"Chicago and Our National Gesture," which appeared in the
i
Bookman the year after the Stearns book appeared. As the
["nationalists" would have it,
To be unmistakably American, a work of art must
hitch up its trousers, shake frail gentlemen’s
hands with vigor, and wipe the stain of tobacco
juice from its lips before speaking. Or, if you
are less of the downright school and slightly more
romantic, the unmistakable national masterpiece
shows the gradual tightening of the muscles about
the mouth as the bitter heavy rises to power and
corruption. (497)
I
Burke objected to the identification of American literature
by reference to its subject matter. As he saw it,
Americanists were too busy "finding truly representative
authors, authors who express the essence, the distillation
of America" (497). For Burke, the individual contribution
''comes in the evolution of an art form" (499). An American
!
tradition in literature could not be established by
reference to the artist’s use of American scenery, however
!
unique it was. Rather, it was the artist’s manner of
representing scene— what Burke would later identify as the
scene-agency ratio (GM)— that could distinguish his or her
work. Critical consciousness of innovative forms and their
psychological effects precluded the establishment of a
|
'literary tradition.
Burke did not explain this view to Cowley in their
correspondence, but wrote instead that "America is the
I
purest concentration point for the vices and vulgarities of
1
[the world" (SC Jan 18, 1923). Cowley answers bitterly,
calling Burke a furniture salesman peddling European
tradition. Cowley had been in Europe for two years and had
come to believe that there was absolutely nothing about
I 107
I
I
European culture that set it above American culture,
particularly regarding the artistic productions it enabled.
!
Cowley hates to see Burke falling for this "American
I
Civilization by Thirty Prominent Americans" (SC Jan 28,
I
1923). Burke answers Cowley by noting their peculiar
(disagreement: "You call me Stearns, and I call you Stearns—
which probably still means that we consider the same thing
i
anathema" (SC Feb. 8, 1923). As Burke sees it "The thirty
I
yammering Americans are yammering simply because they don’t
r
I
have sufficient vitality to arrange interesting lives for
themselves" (SC Feb. 8, 1923). Cowley agrees, mainly
because he had experienced a loss of vitality, a fact that
4
became especially evident to him when he returned from his
i
self-imposed exile in France.
' By 1924 the critical debate took on a new look, and
Cowley’s and Burke’s discussions of nationalistic gestures
toward literature and criticism gave way to increasing
I
contempt for American "business civilization" (Exile’s
I
I
Return 94). The years between 1925 and 1929 were for both
!
men very difficult personally and professionally; the
)
t
correspondence suffered as a result. Fewer letters were
written. Discussions of criticism and literature were
}
scarce, giving way to the more pressing need to maintain the
friendship. The four themes I have identified as central in
their correspondence during the early 1920s— self-
identification, pragmatism, aesthetics, and Americanism-
108
become for Burke recurring problems. The act of
I
identification becomes the primary focus in A Rhetoric of
Motives. Pragmatism is aligned with the "comic attitude" in
!
Attitudes toward History. Burke unites his aesthetics with
socialism in the 1930s in a critique and refinement of
Marxism. And as the fascist threat becomes the locus of
i
critical and political action during the 1930s, we see Burke
argue for a view of Americanism (and its democratic ideals)
as the dialectical and ideological counter-statement, by
I
necessity, of fascism.
i
I
IV. Individuating Perspectives: Burke as Artist and Critic
Burke used Cowley as a sounding-board for much of his
public writing. The correspondence was one way to formulate
the critical principles he had been preoccupied with since
I
his days at Peabody High in Pittsburgh. As he moves into
i
the public arena, he demonstrates that his dialectic with
I
jCowley was enormously helpful for his writing.
i
j During the decade Burke wrote numerous poems, short
jstories, theoretical essays, book reviews, and the first
portions of his novel Towards a Better Life. To sharpen the
discussion, I limit my account to two aspects of this work:
!
1) Burke’s efforts to provide a counter-structure that would
stress the relationships between form, ideology, and
rhetoric; 2) the short stories in which he voices these
positions using alternative methods, those more
109:
traditionally consigned to fiction. Burke’s criticism and ■
fiction in the 1920s are mutually supportive efforts to ;
I
multiply perspectives on the nature and use of language.
f
! To measure the impact that the critical scene and
critical debates of the 1920s had on Burke, we can focus our
attention upon the ways in which he acted rhetorically--in
l
his art and criticism— to respond to his situation. Scenic
factors, such as those Cowley describes in Exile’s Return,
those determined by criticism’s attempt to formalize its
practice, and those of Burke’s own making, translate into
i
acts and purposes that launched Burke’s later excursions
into other fields of inquiry; the individuation of
perspectives enabled by his adoption of rhetoric as a "way
: in" and enacted in his writing sets him apart from other
t
critics, and in the 1930s and 1940s leads him to consider
1
more fully the metaphorical nature of rhetorical inquiry.
j
Burke identified himself early in the 1920s as a critic
I
jWho viewed rhetoric as a necessary concept for understanding
the relationship between literature and criticism. In an
j"Author’s Note" to The White Oxen, the 1924 collection of
'his short stories, Burke observes that the sequence of the
stories embodies a gradual "increase upon the more
)
[rhetorical properties of letters" (CWO ix). He notes in his
I
I
Ipreface to the 1968 second edition that he had in mind an
i
^interest in rhetoric as "formal and stylistic twists as
such, along with their entanglements in character and plot"
110
(CWO ix). At this early stage, rhetoric meant to Burke the
use of formal techniques to create audience expectations and
to create particular effects. In his fiction, his aim was
to extend the range of resources available to the writer.
Criticism--"a subdivision, not of dialectics, but of
rhetoric" (SC Feb. 20, 1922)— should examine its rhetorical
stance as well, he argues, because it marks the boundaries
of inquiry and makes appeals dependent for their effects on
expectations, ones dependent upon the psychology of the
audience. His argument for criticism as rhetoric relies on
the principle that there is no ultimate element on which a
critical system can be based.
f
To explain his selection of rhetoric as the
j
encompassing method for literature and criticism, Burke
makes this following distinction, then suggests that both
I
I
kinds of writing begin with a rhetorical stance:
i We place the intellect above the emotions, but
this is a matter of choice. Pursued, we can move
on; we can say, for instance, that the intellect
sees the object from without while the emotions
strive to become in sympathy with the object.
Thus, that the emotions imply subjection, while
the intellect implies freedom. . . . One prepares
his set of oaths, his reductions to absurdity, his
• calumniatory analogies, and then one takes a
' topic. (SC Feb. 20, 1922)
Criticism places the intellect above the emotions; art would
reverse the relationship. But beginning with a concept of
rhetoric as stylistic invention, Burke views art and
criticism as media for considering processes of thought—
Ill
whether guided by emotional or intellectual identifications-
-as acts rather than finished products, and thus makes
claims for viewing all writing dramatistically, a move that
)
anticipates his work in A Grammar of Motives.
While writing Permanence and Change in 1934, Burke
f
I
identifies his 1925 Dial essay, "Psychology and Form," and
an earlier 1922 Dial book review as his most fertile
theoretical statements in the 1920s, since they helped him
extend a criticism of art until "it included all areas of
production, which do not happen, in the language of common
i
sense, to be called art" (SC June 9, 1934). "The Critic of
|
Dostoevsky"--a review of John Middleton Murry’s novels,
I
Still Life and The Things We Are— sets forth Burke’s
distinction between the psychology of form and the
i
psychology of information. The principles of inquiry he
enacts derive from the recognition of the form/information
opposition; and as Timothy Crusius notes, Burke does not
'find fault with this opposition per se, but rather with "the
status of or relation between conceptual contrasts in some
i
kind of dialectic" (358). The psychology of form, Burke
argues, is an aesthetic consideration, while the psychology
I
i ?
of information subordinates artistic representation to the
"journalistic" impulse, the desire to present information
for its own sake. Burke remains vague on the meaning of
"psychology of form," suggesting only that the writer’s
penchant for the "functional side of beauty" in art has been
ignored after Dostoevsky. Burke wants to resurrect an
aesthetic the appeal of which results more from the artistic
representation of subject-matter than from its documentary
yalue. But the status of form (as ritual or stylistic
I
appeal) is minimal, he argues. At this stage of his
I
inquiry, Burke has yet to put the opposing concepts together
in what Crusius calls "polarities within a union of
*
opposites" (359). It is evident that in 1922, Burke
considers the psychology of information a kind of appeal to
i
be avoided, and he would purify, as remedy, aesthetics of
I
all but its formal elements. As becomes clear, however,
Burke seeks equilibrium— balance— as he realizes (with
i
Flaubert’s help) that in art there can neither be pure form
nor pure subject matter. In the absence of such an
aesthetic valuing form, Burke contends, writers and critics
i
focus too much attention on art as the historical record, as
I
the potential source for moral and political arguments, as
i
the realistic presentation of life. In this review, he
allies himself with Spingarn, Brooks, and others in calling
for a genuinely American aesthetic, and goes no further than
making the point that beauty ought to be the artist’s and
!
critic’s object.
j Moving in a direction Spingarn and Brooks would not,
Burke in 1925 begins to formalize his aesthetic, turning it
into a machine for criticism, thereby distinguishing himself
from critics who felt that an aesthetic ought to be based
113 ;
upon sensibility and taste--two faculties that supposedly
could be nurtured by studying models selected by critics
with the requisite skill but not quantifiable by a formal
system, such as the one Burke proposes. The anti-
I
theoretical attitudes of critics such as Spingarn are
reasoned counter-measures meant to distinguish criticism
I
from empiricism. Burke has similar qualms about empiricism
also, but nevertheless seeks the specific causes of
particular effects. His response to the anti-criticism
critics is to pursue the theoretical urge implicit in the
1
i
empirical approach. Initially Burke’s system is but an
3
orientation or an attitude; later, in the "Lexicon
f
Rhetoricae" section of Counter-Statement. it becomes a full-
fledged method that identifies 1 1 how effects are produced"
rather than "what effects should be produced" (CS 123).
I
[
In "Psychology and Form" (1925) Burke begins with a
jdescription of the first act of Hamlet. in which Hamlet
confronts the ghost of his father. Shakespeare creates the
expectation that the ghost will appear in the first scene,
then diverts our attention with Hamlet’s eloquent asides.
iThe ghost finally appears "at the one moment which was not
pointing towards it" (CS 30).13 The audience’s
expectations, aroused early in the play, are finally met at
i
this moment; form, says Burke, is manifest here in desire
<
*
and its appeasement (CS 31). This example helps him
illustrate the relationship between psychology and form, and
114 .
low the one is to be defined in terms of the other. "That
is, the psychology here is not the psychology of the hero, ,
but the psychology of the audience" (CS 31). Subsequently,
we get the following definition: "form is the creation of an
appetite in the mind of the auditor, and the adequate
satisfying of that appetite" (CS 31). Having progressed
i
jfrom his earlier appeal to "beauty” for its own sake in the
F
Murry review, Burke now equates the audience’s recognition
of form with the perception of beauty.
Burke argues that such an aesthetic based on form is
necessary to counteract the tendency for artists and critics
to judge the quality of art by how much information it
purveys. Journalistic criteria had been "unconsciously
I
introduced into matters of purely aesthetic judgement [sic]"
! (CS 31). When artists emphasize the giving of information
^hey "substitute the psychology of the hero (the subject)
■for the psychology of the audience" (CS 32). In other
i
words, art-as-information resorts to exposition, the filling
i
I
!in of details that define the psychology of its characters
I
jor the important details of its subjects. Such a method was
Jprevalent in the "realistic" novel. In contrast, the
psychology of form appeals to the audience’s desire for
I
perceiving relationships, not by cataloguing the intrinsic
|
qualities of objects or events but by revealing what happens
j
in the mind as objects, events, and characters are placed
beside each other in strategic ways. The psychology of
information can be interesting, of course, because it
i
initially appeals to our desire for facts; yet the value of
information diminishes thereafter, since on a second time
j
around, the audience already knows what is being proffered
as new information. The psychology of form appeals
i
repeatedly because the recovery of desire is as agreeable as
I
its discovery (CS 35).
I
Burke’s recognition that the formal qualities of art
are the basis of its appeal is not the most significant
point he has to make in "Psychology and Form." Ever since
Plato banished poetry from the Republic, critics have
defended art against claims of its inefficiency in
communicating knowledge, sometimes by arguing with Longinus
for the intrinsic value of the sublime, sometimes by arguing
k
with Sir Philip Sidney that poetry actually renders
I
historical truths more teachable ("An Apology for Poetry"
160-61). Burke’s added distinction to the psychology of
form occurs when he makes the reader’s psychology, not the
artist’s or the hero’s, the focal point. In previous
I
formulations, art is viewed as the "waking dream for the
artist" (CS 36). But for Burke, "it is, rather, the
audience who dreams, while the artist oversees the
'conditions which determine this dream" (CS 36). It is this
i
'shift in emphasis that distinguishes Burke’s critical theory
from efforts by Brooks, Spingarn, Parrington and others, who
pay more attention in their criticism to the qualities of
I
texts than to reader psychology.
The appeals of the psychology of information and the
psychology of form result from distinct methods. The
methods of maintaining interest most natural to the
I
psychology of information are surprise and suspense (CS 37).
For instance, artists rely on the psychology of information
when they introduce plot details that require explanation;
l
I
or, they introduce details that are in some ways contrary to
I
I
previous ones, and these new details require further
explanations or the elaboration of motives; the audience
comes to expect this "filling-in-of-details," and the plot
essentially advances by this generative process. Act I of
Hamlet. for example, relies partially on the psychology of
information for its appeal; the audience wants to
i
immediately learn more about the ghost. The desire for more
i
information becomes a real, immediate need that Shakespeare
can manipulate.
The method most natural to the psychology of form is
Eloquence (CS 37). An audience may initially desire more
i
Information but is awakened to the possibilities of other
|
incidents of plot, or is diverted from this desire by
tangents that leave the initial detail unresolved. Such
diversions appeal in themselves when they are eloquent. Act
I of Hamlet appeals as form by pivoting on the sudden
contrast between Hamlet’s digression on the excessive
117,'
drinking of his countrymen and the surprising appearance of |
the ghost in Scene iv; the psychology of form, enhanced by
)
Shakespeare’s eloquence, says Burke, minimizes the
| \
audience’s interest in the presentation of facts in a
general sequence and instead beckons them to take pleasure
in Hamlet’s soliloquies.
I
The successful manipulation of the psychology of form
depends, then, upon whether interruptions of the narrative
i
of details are eloquent. For writing to be eloquent, it
f
must suspend the desire for information, and this requires
casting such details in a different light, shading original
propositions with alternative or radically different
perspectives, or arousing new expectations that supplant
I
previous ones. Eloquence manifests itself all the way down
i
I
to the sentence level. In an eloquent presentation,
j those elements of surprise and suspense [central
to the psychology of information] are subtilized,
j carried down into the writing of a line or a
I sentence, until in all its smallest details the
j work bristles with disclosures, contrasts,
| restatements with a difference, ellipses, images,
aphorism, volume, sound-values, in short all that
| complex wealth of minutiae which, in their line-
for-line aspect we call style and in their
broadest outlines we call form. (CS 37-8)
Burke’s argument that eloquence is the basic method of the
jpsychology of form--the means of arousing and fulfilling
appetites in the audience— foregrounds the rhetorical
laspects of art. And, Burke argues, it challenges the notion
,that art is worthwhile simply because it represents
I 118
I
emotions, such as pity, fear, etc. Rather, "the emotions
which we experience in life proper, as non-artists, are
simply the material on which eloquence may feed" (CS 41).
i
Making eloquence— i.e. rhetoric--the end and essence of art
helps Burke explain the appeal of works that do not strictly
i
rely upon plot or unity of action for their effects. Art
may pause, digress, inveigh, declaim, announce, and so on,
I
all in the interest of furthering a qualitative progression
!
of moods or attitudes— the audience is gratified when it
feels the rightness of the progression, having recognized
Lhe balance, poise, and rhythm of the language, or the
i
shifting yet purposeful sensibility of the artist.
Qualitative form appeals to the audience's penchant for
i
negotiating contraries. That Burke later applies this
concept to the writing of criticism--in fact, to any
i
writing--should not be too surprising given his penchant for
jupsetting rigid distinctions between the genres. When we
jdiscuss his writing in the 1930s and 1940s, it becomes even
I
more evident that this rhetoric of form guides his own
inquiry.
I
j Burke’s emphasis on artistic technique rather than
artistic value opens him to the same charge leveled at
rhetoric since Aristotle: the emphasis on techniques and
their effects sidesteps ethical and moral judgments, which
have traditionally helped critics sustain and define
literature’s intrinsic worth and distinguish between good
and bad writing, between mere showiness and a higher
purpose. The problem, as Burke and other aesthetic critics
such as Spingarn saw it, was that criticism based on
universal moral or ethical principles had no way to account
for appeal and that art could, like propaganda, achieve its
I
effects whether or not it adhered to such principles. Burke
does not evade the issue of moral or ethical judgment
entirely, however. (As we will see, he turns his attention
i
to the artistry of propaganda in the 1930s.) He wants to
account for the appeal of information in and of itself, a
trend that does reveal attitudes toward life and therefore
embodies an ethic--namely, an ethic fostered by the
journalistic impulse to present facts in "objective" forms.
The desire for information becomes an ethic because it
supplants other motives as the justification for action.
i
Burke does not rule "intrinsic interest out of literature.
i
| I wish simply to have it restored to its properly minor
position, seen as merely one out of many possible elements
I
I
! of style" (CS 33-4). And he wants to show that, contrary
to popular opinion, the psychology of information is a
rhetorical appeal with clearly definable norms of behavior
;that only appear objective because they have been
'enculturated. His argument is polemical, a counter-response
*to the propensities of the age, an attempt to multiply the
I
resources available to the artist by supplementing
techniques of realism with alternative, revolutionary forms.
Such a polemic is necessary, he feels, when art, like
criticism, is constrained indiscriminately by force of habit
or by reified systems of thought.
V. Burke’s Fiction in the 1920s
i
In keeping with his contention that good writing and
good criticism result when the writer utilizes the full
I
i
complement of rhetoric, Burke turns to fiction and poetry in
the 1920s to provide healthy correctives to an artistic
sensibility that had been dulled by the adherence to popular
t
(though not necessarily traditional) forms. As early as
i
I
1916 Burke began publishing poetry and fiction in The
I
Sansculotte. the Ohio State literary magazine. Even then he
recognized the critic in him, writing to Cowley that "I love
'to write around a grain of philosophy, rather than around a
jsensation" (SC Nov. 24, 1915). Matthew Josephson observed
I
that in 1917, "the question of how we were to use language
<
(interested Burke above all things; in the end the
(theoretical critic and psychologist of language outweighed
the poet and storyteller in him. He fairly bubbled with
ideas for renovating the technique and form of literature”
j(64). My treatment of Burke’s fiction proceeds from these
observations.
i Though there are certainly many literary voices in his
I
| ”creative" writing--modernist, romantic, realist— Burke
^attempts to compose a literary voice that supplements
dialogieally the theoretical statements he makes in his
|
criticism. In his foreword to Book of Moments (1954) he
says, "The ideal lyrist would probably speak through as many
shifting personalities as the ideal dramatist" (CP vii). He
i
acknowledges that his early poetry was, as he puts it
"doctrinal" (CP viii) because it advanced ideas rather than
sensations. I want to view Burke’s fiction from the
standpoint of his criticism, as shifts in personality that
enable further perspectives on the evolution of his critical
method. Furthermore, his fiction elaborates the critique of
Americanism begun in his correspondence with Cowley and
woven into his critical theory during the 1930s.
In 1921 Burke reported to Cowley that "I have made the
first step of my career as an authentic writer. (I have,
that is, seen my way clear of imitation, in mentality as
well as form) (SC Sept. 12, 1921). One of Burke’s earliest
stories, "The White Oxen," had not been such a step. "The
.White Oxen," written in the realist vein, tells of young
Matthew Carr and his coming-of-age, his unusual attachment
|to the white oxen (symbols of the ascetic life), and his
janxious fluctuations between hope and despair. "The White
jOxen," like "Mrs. Maecenas," "The Excursion," and
("Olympians" are stories of symbolic realism & la Flaubert,
whom Burke had sought to emulate during his early days in
Greenwich Village. Each of these stories is well-executed,
but as Cowley points out in his Dial review of the
I 122
collection, "Flaubertian realism has become a commodity: any
trained writer can manufacture it, and any editor, if he
kesires, buy it across the counter (CRKB 4). Burke, as he
says, did not forego imitation until "The Book of Yul,"
first published in 1922 in Secession and "My Dear Mrs.
!
Wurtelbach," first published in Broom in 1923.
| This latter story was, Burke says, a turning point: "I
i
was trying to work out a form that would proceed somewhat
like the movements of a symphony, with qualitative breaks
from one part to the next (as though each were on a
ciifferent ’level’)" (CWO xii). Feeling glum about the
contemporary literary situation, Burke had bet Cowley ten
i
j
dollars that he "could turn up with something formally
I
different from the average" (CWO xii) and still be
i
I
successful. To do something different meant abandoning, for
instance, the strictures of plot. (As Matthew Josephson
points out, such a move did have precedent; the
i
I
"Unanimists," a school of French writers founded by Jules
Romain around 1914, "gave expression to a sort of urban
|
pantheism, and pictured crowds of unknowns rather than
individuals treated in detail or analyzed" (97).14) Burke’s
i
i
plotless "My Dear Mrs. Wurtelbach" has three parts. The
first tells of a man’s (Charles’s) letter of condolence to
Mrs. Wurtelbach, whose husband has recently died. The
letter, written with feigned sensitivity, is contrasted with
Charles’s thoughts of his own death and, more prominently,
j 123 ,
1
his efforts to ensure that his advertising company meets
j
deadline. The second part is written from Mr. Wurtelbach's
I
perspective and reveals his roving, perverse thoughts while
on a nature hike with three women. The third part is even
Lore disconnected, portraying the revelry and chaos during a
i
banquet of the "All-American Corporation" and a speech by
l
its president glorifying its worldly conquests, the hunger
!for its commodity, and the divinity of its founder, "Mr.
Hemmingway."l5 Wurtelbach has disappeared entirely. The
third part ends abruptly with this interruption by the
narrator, who has to this point been silent:
THE WORLD IS WITHOUT A TOY. Romance, realism, the
; inquisition, the City of God, geo-centricity . . .
they have left us nothing . . . nothing but a
wobbly art trying to hit us on the head with a
| club. Is there some life beyond the mucous
membranes? Is there some significance beyond a
i little suburban home? (CWO 142)
i
In a closing note of despair, the narrator then writes,
"David, my little man, sling your pebble at the universe"
I
(CWO 143).
The three parts of "My Dear Mrs. Wurtelbach" have not
i
been connected logically together, but associationally, so
l
rthat in each section we progress through the various stages
of affectation and foolishness that pervades these
I
characters’ lives. The narrator’s sudden intrusion reminds
us that while we have been struggling to find the coherence
in the narrative, a result of our unwitting acceptance of
the logic of realism, we have in so doing sought
124
significance in the lives of people where there is only
blind acceptance of life, a life in which advertising
i
(leadlines, sexual perversity, and big business hold sway
p r human relations < themes to which Burke repeated!,
turns). The sharp break in the narrative at the end of the
story is disorienting to the point that we seek alternative
means of connecting parts to the whole. With a sudden
I
flash, we realize that the question "Who is Wurtelbach" has
i
been minimized, through formal means, and been replaced by
the question "Is there some significance to our lives beyond
the immediate distractions of the present?"
i
j "Prince Llan," the 1924 semi-autobiographical fable
that signalled the end of Broom because of its sexual
innuendoes and the U.S. Post Office’s Censorship law, marked
an even more experimental phase in Burke’s fiction. "Prince
Llan" is the fictional enactment of a dialectic that asks us
Jto seek unity in division, a dramatization of the Burkean
desire for equilibrium. Subtitled "An Ethical Masque in
Seven Parts, including a Prologue and Coda," "Prince Llan"
jtells of a man’s quest to "formulate some principle of
living," to "find some one exhortation or admonition to
simplify human conduct" (CWO 222). Like a creation myth,
I
.the tale begins "Logos Verbum the Word" and out of the
"universal brew" springs Prince Llan. We learn that the
Prince’s spiritual adviser, Gudruff, has disappeared but we
I
do not learn why or how, and with this detail Burke arouses
125
the expectation that we will eventually discover the secret.
1
The information is delayed, however. Burke instead
minimizes our interest in this detail by moving forward with
jiescriptions of the Prince’s menage a trois with Alpha and
Nomega, two women he "purchased" at an auction. Part II
then turns to the Prince’s philosophical speculations about
i
the nature of love. The Prince is, at the end of Part II, a
forsaken man because his two lovers "particularize, but do
f
I
not symbolize, the general" (CWO 223).
I The "Programme" of Part III informs us that "The poet
I
adopts his protagonist’s viewpoint, and portrays life as a
i
mad-house wherein even logic would be a kind of derangement,
I
of bias" (CWO 224). Whatever pretense at realism the story
had sustained is broken; the story now centers on the
writer’s struggle to create. The poet, not the Prince,
tells us of various attempts by philosophers to systematize
I
life and of the spiritual and physical torment of the poet’s
existence as a "lyric cook" (CWO 224). Prince Llan, a
I
witness to all this, reappears, becomes disoriented, and
I
jthen sets off on a ship.
I
By the end of this surrealistic episode, we find that
our original expectations have been confused by the
I
paradoxical appearance of the poet in a tale that we
expected would sustain the realist illusion. Suddenly the
poet is our protagonist, someone struggling to situate
himself amid conflicting voices, each alternately suggesting
126
some ideal response to the world. As the poet puts it, he
is ’ ’mumbling recipes, describing the setting of tables,
rehearsing an ideal course of dishes" (CWO 224). The Prince
and Gudruff (whom we are yet to meet) seem to be disparate
sensibilities, symbols not of people but of attitudes, that
i
the poet is trying to reunite in his own mind.
In Part IV the Prince renounces his love for Alpha and
i
Nomega. Part V begins with a reminder of the opening scene
in Part I, where subsequent to the Prince’s creation, there
i
had been "war, pestilence, and the anguish of the
i
conscience" (CWO 229).16 Saddened somewhat by the break up
of his menage A trois, the Prince begins to recount a
I
philosophy from out of his past, which we soon learn is
i
Gudruff’s. The philosophy renounces the pleasures of
sensuality in favor of the intellect: "A reality encompassed
i
by intelligence falls outside the realm of a complete
experience, outside the realm of an organic understanding"
(CWO 229). Language, through its abstractness and its
operation in the intellect helps one escape the vagueness of
organic experience in a cathartic process: "By the word I
create, I act--which means, I slay. Man by nature a slayer.
Having become too subtle to dispose of his maladjustments by
I
!
jthe slaying of wild beasts, he turns to the slaying of his
jemotions" (CWO 230). The Prince, now speaking as Gudruff,
isays that "emotion cuts through a tangle of ideas--and each,
■expressed by the formulas of art and thought, are remedies
j 127
!
against the complexities of existing” (CWO 231). By the end
i
t
of Part VI, the Prince peers through a mysterious door only
to see another door ahead; he moves forward not knowing
j
where he is headed.
In Part VII, the poet comfortably believes he has now
united Gudruff and the Prince— synthesizing from them a
i
dualism not of strife but one of "mutual completions" (233).
i Attempting to "crystallize this enthusiasm into dogma," the
poet is overcome by "the cosmic burden" (CWO 234) of
connecting these sensibilities. The poet, once again the
"hero," retreats to his books and begins to die, having
poisoned himself with the contemplation of life and the
I
complications of competing philosophical systems.
|
; What has happened? "Prince Llan" begins as a realistic
ifable and arouses our desire to learn about the Prince’s
separation from Gudruff. But by the middle of the tale, the
poet becomes the focal point, and the Prince and Gudruff
I
symbolize the conflicting forces contending for dominance
i
within the poet. The Gudruff problem becomes secondary; the
i
poet’s dilemma becomes the dramatic principle to which we
|
relate the action. The form of the story is self-devouring,
like the poet’s obsession for merging the contrary impulses
|
of two selves, one governed by reason, the other, emotion.
i
I
The form of "Prince Llan," recast in the depiction of the
poet, purges impulses within the audience as well by forcing
a decision--whether to receive the tale as one would receive
a realistic fable (in which case one would be seriously
confused by the presence of the poet and his ritual suicide,
unless one mistakenly believes Prince Llan to be the poet),
1
or to re-form one’s perspectives by looking for alternative
ways to unify the story, e.g., perhaps by conceiving of it
as the poet’s struggle to reunite his conflicting selves.
I
In "Prince Llan" the resolution ends in death. Having
resolved conflicting impulses and stabilized this unity in
dogma, the poet has no recourse but suicide,
j Whether our attempts to unify the story (or the self)
i
are successful or not, Burke’s strategic use of the
I
psychology of form, in his attempt to promote "unity through
a balance of conflicting parts" (Munson 171), succeeds in
ctirecting attention to the process of interpretation--the
i
"throwing of the confetti," if you will.
j
I Burke’s fiction in the 1920s tries to stabilize the
"new forms" he had called for in "Chicago and Our National
Gesture" in 1923. He attempts to recover and repopularize
the resources of eloquence that he claims have been lost
because of the culture’s over-reliance on realism as the
■form for expressing aesthetic truths. And though Burke’s
creative efforts are interesting in themselves as fiction,
jthey also represent his urge to substantiate--to voice— his
critical formulations. A story like "My Dear Mrs.
I
Wurtelbach," for instance, is a demonstration of the
1
aesthetic potential of qualitative form. And Burke’s
project in the 1920s is to multiply the resources of the
artist and critic--the available forms of expression— to
counteract the impulsive tendency in America to reduce
artistic and critical alternatives, to restrict freedom and
prescribe obedience— tendencies that are both anti-
I
I
democratic and anti-intellectual.
VI. Conclusion
i
As in his criticism, one of the central concerns of
I
Burke’s fiction is the human capacity for structuring
i
meaning in a world of multiple possibilities. He keenly
i
feels the dangers of closed systems of thought and easy
I
resolutions. His way of escaping the fateful encounter with
ends is to continue opening doors, like Prince Llan, not as
i
a nihilist bent on refuting all previous positions, but as a
i
i
critic continually searching for a better life.
I In Chapter 3 we see Burke expand his concept of form in
Counter-Statement in 1931 to include its function as an
appeal dependent upon "collaborative expectancy" and the
ideology of the audience. After Towards a Better Life’s
publication in 1932, he focuses his attention exclusively
jupon developing a method for interpreting interpretation.
I
The troubles he has with the uncritical pursuit of taste by
jimpressionists like Spingarn become the basis for Burke’s
l
assertion in Permanence and Change that we must move beyond
j
a criticism of experience to a criticism of criticism. Such
pragmatic skepticism is an assertion of free will in a
Lritical (and political) scene that sees the anti-democratic
rhetoric of fascism and behaviorism dominating public
debate. Rhetoric, having been in "Lexicon Rhetoricae" a
study of the appeals of form, becomes by Attitudes toward
History a study of the methods whereby people forumulate
]
responses to the world of discourse. The dialectical
i
counterpart to such a rhetoric is the dramatic metaphor, a
I
perspective on perspectives enabling one to sustain the
necessary critique of criticism.
Notes
1. While an editor at The Dial, Burke did the layout for the
first published version of "The Waste Land" in November,
1922.
I
I
2. Harold Stearns, as will be discussed at length below,
edited American Civilization: An Inquiry by Thirty
Americans. a work severely critical of American life, then
immediately left for Paris.
3. Blosney and Slothwell are fictitious names.
4. See Matthew Josephson, Life Among the Surrealists. 7-9,
for an account of this incident.
5. Matthew Josephson discusses this mistaken perception at
length in Life Among the Surrealists. 3-14.
I
6. See, for instance, the opening of "Chicago and Our
National Gesture" (1923), which is quoted ahead.
7. Burke dedicated The Philosophy of Literary Form to Watson
in 1941, and A Rhetoric of Motives to W.C. Blum (Watson’s
pseudonym) in 1950.
8. See for instance, Thoreau’s Walden. Emerson’s "The
American Scholar" and Whitman’s Leaves of Grass (1891-1892).
9. Harold Stearns became Harold Stone in Hemingway’s The Sun
Also Rises.
40. This view had its origins in Coleridge, who had in
Biographia Litteraria aligned reason and the imagination
'against fancy and understanding. A similar claim was
'advanced by Emerson, who had argued in "Nature" (1836) that
("intuition" or "reason" gives us subjective knowledge of
(ideal truths and "necessary" ideas.
jll. William E. Cain's "Notes toward a History of Anti-
jCriticism" sketches this tradition at length.
|l2. Burke’s concern for "ideological clarity" will become
more prominent in the 1930s. I save a discussion of this
idea until Chapter 3.
I
l
J
13. For ease of reference, page numbers refer to the version
of "Psychology and Form" reprinted with only minor
adjustments^ in Counter-Statement. 1968 edition.
:.4. Josephson identifies Joyce’s Ulysses« Dos Passos’s
Manhattan Transfer and U.S.A. trilogy, and Burke’s Towards a
Better Life as novels working in this grain.
I
15. Though Burke misspells the name, he apparently has in
mind Ernest Hemingway, whom Burke felt glorified to a
ridiculous degree the "naturalness" of writing (SC Oct. 3,
1929) .
I
j
16. Here Burke anticipates the "dialectical biologism" of
Permanence and Change, which favors a mind/body merger
rather than the Cartesian split.
133
Chapter 3
Kenneth Burke and American Criticism in the 1930s
I
i
t
In a scene dominated by the Depression, New Deal
.politics, Fascism, and Stalinism, two of the decade’s
prominent critical orientations— Marxist and New Critical--
jbegin to battle over the proper social role of criticism.1 |
i !
Burke’s Counter-Statement is an attempt to mediate between j
| i
ithese two stances, launching him toward a more complex view I
' i
of rhetoric than was currently popular, a rhetoric utilizingj
jthe resources of the aesthetic approach, but pointing as |
I
well toward literature as social and symbolic action.
Granville Hicks’s ensuing debate with Burke reveals the
dualities which at the time led to bitter arguments between
Marxists and New Critics. Burke’s speech at the 1935
i
I
American Writers’ Congress, a subject of considerable debate
i
jboth at the time and in contemporary criticism, shows him
bringing his method to bear on the socialist’s predicament
in American society. Set beside "My Approach to Communism"
and his involvement in Partisan Review’s "What Is
Americanism?" symposium, Burke’s much-discussed speech
134 |
becomes one moment in his continuing effort to recognize
rhetoric’s role in ideological analysis and metaphysical
arguments. Permanence and Change and Attitudes toward
i
i
History broaden his views of rhetoric as the means for
discussing human relations. The two key formulae I will
pursue in these texts are, respectively, "perspective by
incongruity" and "bureaucratization of the imaginative."
Both books demonstrate the power of the rhetorical
perspective and raise new possibilities for its application
i
to the problems that occur when human cooperation recedes
{
I
from the democratic ideal of "organized distrust" (CS 114)
and approaches fascism.
i
t The presence of fascist thinking in America, a charge
directed at the Roosevelt New Deal by the likes of Herbert
I
Hoover and Ogden Mills (Dennis 154), represented a distinct
danger to democracy as institutionalized dialectic. Many of
Burke’s fellow socialists had made the same charge, and had
I
seen such a development as the New Deal as indicative that
j
capitalism was on the wane. Stalinist propaganda convinced
many Americans that Communism would rescue the country from
I
^fascism. Soviet purges in the mid-1930s, however, suddenly
made the fascist crisis in the United States even more
urgent.
i
j Burke’s adoption of the comic attitude— an endorsement
[
of pragmatic skepticism— was a plea for the recognition of
the rhetorical nature of literature as well as propaganda.
j ______________ __ .
135
In his evaluation of attitudes prominent in the 1930s in the
942 essay, "War and Cultural Life," Burke stresses the
prominence of the opposition to rhetoric, and in light of
his concern for shifting stress, Burke’s writing in the
i
1930s destabilizes the grounds for this opposition:
| During the early years of the New Deal, when the
most aggressive trend in the arts was under the
domination of the political Left, those who
opposed the Leftist propaganda art usually did so
i not merely by attacking this particular kind of
; propaganda art but rather by attacking the
j criteria of propaganda art in general. That is,
; to gain maximum forcefulness for their claims,
I they opposed this particular rhetoric with a
, categorical opposition to all rhetoric. (406)
The opposition Burke sees is one between literature and
i
propaganda; the means of uniting them is through rhetoric.
Such a union of opposites is necessary if we are to expose
j
the dangers of categorical opposition or to avoid the
rejection of counter-arguments on the basis of their
"propagandistic nature," rhetoric, or ideology.
I■ The Critical Scenery. 1930-1940
i
l The Great Depression and its devastating consequences
i
had an enormous psychological impact on Burke and American
i
critics in general, not only because the Depression prompted
new literary experiments and new subject matter but also
i
because it forced critics to further examine their social
I
I
roles. Prior to the stock market crash in 1929, prosperity
i
in the United States had never been greater. There were
ikore banks during the 1920s than at any time in U.S.
i
history. Unemployment figures were lower than they had been
I
in years. But between 1929 and 1930, the numbers of those
I
employed dropped nearly 40%. Total bank assets dropped 50%
i
between 1930 and 1933. The capacity to produce goods had
far outrun the capacity to consume them. Despite
i
proclamations of a consumption ethic spread by desperate
advertisers, production was too efficient, unrestrained, and
many people were unable to purchase their share of goods.
. In his 1954 prologue to Permanence and Change (first
published in 1935), Burke describes the period as "a time
I
when there was a general feeling that our traditional ways
were headed for a permanent change, maybe even a permanent
collapse" (xlvii). In fact, he continues, Permanence and
i
Change was, like other literary and critical works, "such a
I
book as authors in those days sometimes put together to keep
themselves from falling apart" (xlvii). Burke's account of
i
Towards a Better Life--his only novel— and its beginnings
i
also reveals the hopelessness of the times:
The first ten chapters of this novel . . . were
I written and published as "work in progress" during
j the fatal months that were urgently on the way
j towards the "traumatic" market crash of 1929. The
book was completed in the "traumatic" months
i immediately following that national crisis. And
it was published in 1931, when the outlook was
exceptionally bleak. Though several competent
critics were friendly to its experimenting, the
author found that the figure of its sales (or,
more accurately nonsales) were also "traumatic."
(TBL v)
13 7 |
How could writers and critics respond to an economic
situation that haunted every aspect of their lives,
including their attempts to make a living by writing and to
validate their activity in a society whose problems seemed
far greater than their need to represent life artistically
and critically?
I
I
The political situation, of course, changed
dramatically as well. The Republican Platform under Hoover
in 1928 had forecast great prosperity: "By unwavering
adherence to sound principles, through the wisdom of
Republican policies, • and the capacity of Republican
(
administrations, the foundations have been laid and the
greatness and prosperity of the country firmly established"
( Johnson 280). But four years later, the same party made
this assessment: "We meet in a period of widespread distress
and of an economic depression that has swept the world. The
jemergency is second only to that of a great war. The human
suffering occasioned may well exceed that of a period of
i
factual conflict" (Johnson 339). Hoover’s 1928 call for
rugged individualism had, ideally, meant a reduced role for
!
|the federal government in the private sector. But after the
!
Market collapse, Hoover mistakenly put too much of the
burden of economic recovery on private industry and local
authority, believing that the country’s problems were more
j
psychological than economic (Jones 455). In the winter of
1931 Hoover spoke optimistically of imminent recovery,
trying to cushion despair by glorifying small gains. By the
onset of the presidential campaign of 1932, Hoover had begun
I
to find ways of subsidizing with federal aid industries that
i
could presumably stimulate the economy, a move which
|
alienated the public more than ever.
i
i
When Roosevelt began to speak of a "New Deal" shortly
i
after taking office in 1933, he enjoyed great public
support. Shortly thereafter, however, socialists began to
argue for a more egalitarian distribution of national
wealth, and charges of totalitarianism were directed at
j
Roosevelt by aspiring politicians like Huey Long (Jones
I
462). Whether such accusations were accurate or not, the
i
centralization of power in the Executive Branch— perhaps an
inevitable consequence of all national crises— had been
motivated by the Depression, which in turn made socialism
j
even more appealing to many intellectuals. These political
circumstances helped make the division between aesthetic and
j
I
Marxist critics even greater, and the resultant polemics of
j
more import for our consideration of Burke’s amelioration of
Marxist and New Critical views.
Perhaps the dismal forecasts in the 1920s by Stearns
and others had been prophetic in claiming that American
jintellectuals had failed to exercise their learning to
[identify a culturally rich literary tradition, one that
I
might have helped balance laissez faire politics and
economics with strong arguments of social unity. Could
139]
critics remain distant observers of artistic production,
continue to cultivate taste--as Spingarn and other ,
I
Impressionists would have them? Or could they continue to
I
formalize aesthetic principles for the sake of educating the
I
public and creating the conditions for moral leadership amid
I
I
I
the confusion and despair of a severe economic crisis?
I
Could they become social actors, the psychological healers
i
in a culture that had suddenly found its reliance on the
fruits of capitalism to be self-destructive? It was clear
I
by 1930 that, as Burke points out, the critical scenery
would change tremendously as writers and critics sought to
gauge their situation and formulate responses to it.
I
j The Depression forced many writers to recognize their
i
participation in sustaining the illusion of America’s
unfulfilled greatness. That the American critical scenery
would get better on its own suddenly seemed in 1929
i
hopelessly speculative, another manifestation of the laissez
!faire attitude pervading the culture during the 1920s. It
appeared that, as Daniel Aaron aptly points out, "the
I
American writer’s running quarrel with his society, his
natural inclination to admonish and to castigate in the
iguise of entertainment, may have sprung as much or more from
his identity with that society as from his alienation"
i
.(Writers on the Left 2). American critics had come to
I
I
depend upon the supposedly stable aspects of the culture--
i
whether or not these aspects were good or bad— to
140 |
professionalize their activity. The Depression demonstrated
convincingly that the health of a society can degenerate
I
irrespective of sagacious critics and cultural nay-sayers.
I
I
By 1932 the time had come to act on the American situation
not by endlessly characterizing it but by actively
ameliorating change.
i
i
II• Critical Stances. 1930-1940: Marxism and New Criticism
In such situations, having sensed the disparity between
ideals and practices and grown hostile toward a world that
flights their needs and holds their values in contempt,
writers often resort to social criticism and overt political
action (Aaron Writers on the Left 1). Such is the case
throughout the 1930s, a period when critics assume their
newly identified roles as social actors with great devotion.
As in any crisis, various factions arise, each with its own
remedies. Vincent B. Leitch identifies the four significant
groups of critics as the Marxists, New Critics, Chicago
Critics, and New York Intellectuals (1). Here I want to
examine the debates between the Marxists and the New
J
Critics, two groups with whom Burke is frequently
i
associated. My aim is to recover the volatile yet
productive arguments incited by the rise of socialism, the
movement of the post-World War I writers to universities,
and the Depression. Burke, through his identifications with
Marxism and New Criticism becomes an exemplary case for
141
considering the strengths and limitations of these two
critical approaches.
I Broadly considered, the critical debates of the 1930s
I
began with arguments between Impressionists and Humanists
■ i
over the purposes and aims of literature. The
I
Impressionists included such critics as James G. Hunecker,
!
J.E. Spingarn, and H.L. Mencken. Spingarn’s position,
outlined in Chapter 2, was that criticism was the
cultivation of taste through repeated exposure to great
I
models. The Impressionist method, if it can be called
methodical, was openly personal and subjective; sometimes,
as in Mencken’s social criticism, the tone was obtrusively
bombastic. Humanism was something quite different, even
though it shared with Impressionism a high regard for the
individual response to literature, a response that could be
coached by attention to classical principles. Humanists
such as Paul Elmer More, Irving Babbitt, and Norman Foerster
opposed the naturalistic and romantic Impressionists who had
i
begun to pervade American letters. The Humanist catchwords
were "order," "reason," "ethics"; their philosophical models
were Platonic, Aristotelian, and Christian. Their
!
principles of aesthetics were harmony and decorum. They
I
felt artists should imitate great models using new content
I
(Aaron 233). Paul Elmer More, for instance, felt that the
Impressionism of critics like Mencken was a "demon of the
j
absolute," the deluded effort to establish idiosyncratic,
142
temporal standards of taste irrespective of the "actual data
of experience," which, More felt, consisted as a well-
established literary tradition ("Demon of the Absolute"
i
Iff). More also felt that those who studied American
f '
\
literature needed "the discipline of a classical humanism,
I
which will train the imagination in loyalty to the great
traditions, while cherishing the liberty to think and the
I
power to create without succumbing to the seductions of the
»
market-place or the gutter" (76). Many contemporary
writers, however, lacked such discipline. For example, More
called Dos Passos’s Manhattan Transfer— an experimental
I
novel blending various styles in a collage-like
j
representation of life in New York— "an explosion in a
I
cesspool" (63). Irving Babbitt, like More, rejected
naturalism and romanticism because their proponents
repudiated decorum— the proprieties of form and style--as
something "external and artificial" (105). By 1930 the
Humanists and Impressionists had firmly established their
^conservative positions, and as usually happens in times of
I
jcrises, these positions subsequently served as models that
jCould be demolished by more revolutionary critics, including
both Marxists and New Critics, two as yet amorphous groups
t
^sharing little more than a workplace in common (the Marxists
i
largely emerged from New York City, while many of the New
i
Critics were "Tennessee agrarians").
143
The Depression, says Aaron, prompted new subject matter
in art and criticism, giving rise to a more pronounced
concern for the political scene than Humanists or
i
Impressionists conveyed. The new socialist movement was
t
deemed liberal because of its rejection of the constancies
i
if -good.' literature the "pure art"
by More, Babbitt, Spingarn, and others. Such efforts to
establish tradition seemed socially disconnected. As Aaron
I
j
puts it, "If much of the so-called ’proletarian* writing
!
violated almost every literary canon and if to many it
I
]
positively reeked with the Depression, the best of it
managed to objectify the social forces as they operated in
the lives of real people" ("Writers on the Left" 152).
Early in the 1930s the social model informing this
revolution in the canon was the Soviet one. To many writers
i
i
at the time, the U.S.S.R. was a "hive of happy industry" and
a sharp contrast helping cultural critics expose the social
I
(disorders and the widespread despair in the United States
i
(Aaron 153). Despite its totalitarian features and its
Curtailing of individual liberties, many writers in America
^felt that the Soviet experiment had succeeded in liberating
i
minorities, establishing a workers* government, and leading
the world in the struggle against international fascism
^(Aaron 155). Socialist writers in the early 1930s joined
•John Reed Clubs in great numbers, organizations whose aim
was to unify the Marxist agenda. The American Writers’
144
Congress of 1935 brought together hundreds of prominent
writers and critics who had made socialism a central facet
of their work. Marxism, fueled by economic conditions in
the U.S., had by the mid-1930s become a powerful force on
!
I
the political and critical scene.
I Even before 1930, Marxism had become the means of
i
evaluating American literature in the writings of Granville
i
i
Hicks--literary editor of The New Masses, the most prominent
i
I
Marxist journal in the 1930s--Michael Gold, Joseph Freeman,
and V.F. Calverton— whose The Liberation of American
I
Literature (1932) was the first full-length Marxist study of
the history of American letters (Goldsmith 62). According
i
to Leitch, four modes of Marxist analysis predominated in
jthe late 1920s and early 1930s. The first type was a
}
historical and theoretical inquiry into the status of
I
literature in society. The second type specified
literature’s political function. The third type sought to
disclose the ideological configurations in the literary
i
■tradition. The fourth type focused on the ideological
leanings of contemporary works (6-7). Calverton’s The
Liberation of American Literature was an example of the
;third type. In that book, Calverton deliberately avoided
(aesthetic analysis and evaluation, and sought instead to
analyze the ideology that supported particular historical
works. "Craftsmanship," he argued, "must be utilized to
create objects of revolutionary meaning" (460). The models
145
of aesthetic achievement established by the Impressionists
were ancillary to the more important function of literature
as the agency of proletarian revolution. Granville Hicks,
perhaps the most outspoken and idealistic of the Marxist
!
1
critics in the 1930s, proposed a system that would unify
aesthetic principles with the political aims of literature.
I
i
He argued for what Michael Gold had called "proletarian
realism" (Aaron 208). Literature, as an "adequate portrayal
i
of life . . . would lead the proletarian reader to recognize
his role in the class struggle" (Hicks 11). A book,
i
I
therefore, should be "judged by its ability to have that
!
kind of effect" (11). The aesthetic here was based upon the
conclusion that art ought to represent life intensely,
I
I
which, according to Marxism, meant showing directly or
indirectly life’s central issue— the class struggle. If the
I
writer can render life intensely, realistically, then he or
she can reshape the reader’s attitude toward the bourgeoisie
I
^Hicks 11-2). Precisely what aesthetic principles enabled
the proletarian writer to represent life in this manner
remained, at least in Hicks's and Calverton’s work, somewhat
i
vague and would soon be the point of contention between
Marxists and New Critics. Nevertheless, Hicks and Calverton
I
i
did revitalize the connections between literature and
A
society, as well as show that writing could be an instrument
for reform, which the modernists of the 1920s had forgotten
146 |
in their plaints against industrialization and social
i
indifference.
I
The rise in popularity of Marxism in the early 1930s, 1
quick as it was, was followed by an even quicker
| i
disappearance. Around 1936 reports began to trickle in from'
j
abroad that the Soviet people had begun to experience
| t
difficulties at least as serious as those experienced by
Americans. The assassination of Sergei Kirov, Leningrad
party secretary and Politburo member, in 1934 signalled the
beginning of a massive effort by Stalin to eliminate all
bppositionists. As Cain notes, "Once the truth of the purge
i
trials of 1936-1938 came to light, and once Stalin signed
I
his pact with Hitler in 1939, it was impossible to remain a
Marxist with a clean conscience" (Crisis in Criticism 96).
The Hitler-Stalin Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 brought
fascists together wi'th communists; American Marxists —
i
I
including Granville Hicks, Malcolm Cowley, and Lewis
jMumford— publicly renounced their affiliations with the
Communist Party. (It should be noted, however, that many
'critics, Burke among them, did not wholeheartedly believe
accounts of the Stalinist purges until much later.)
I
Furthermore, the growing popularity of New Criticism ensured
the Marxist retreat with its energetic rejection of its so-
called "extrinsic" method.
i
The Marxist position was criticized severely because it
avoided the issue of aesthetic judgment, an issue that in
147
1930 continued to occupy the attention of critics trained in
i
the tradition of Impressionism and Humanism. In Edmund
Wilson’s words,
! '
| Marxism by itself can tell us nothing whatever
j about the goodness or badness of a work of art. A
man may be an excellent Marxist, but if he lacks
imagination and taste he will be unable to make
the choice between a good and an inferior book
both of which are ideologically unexceptionable.
(204).
James T. Farrell, a leftist critic himself, also criticized
the Marxist position because it overemphasized literature’s
i
obedience to economic conditions and because it used the
categories "bourgeois" and "proletarian" to make value
judgments rather than descriptive statements (438). Like
Farrell, Burke, as we will see below when we discuss his
arguments with Granville Hicks, had strong socialist
l
sentiments of his own, but they did not prevent him from
i
criticizing the hardline Marxist position.
i
| The most vociferous objections to Marxism came from
I
Southern Agrarian critics, such as Cleanth Brooks and Allen
I
i
Tate. While these New Critics desired to abandon the
excesses of biographical and philogical criticism, the most
i
historically present antagonists for the emerging New
i
Critical movement were the Marxists of the early 1930s. New
!
Criticism was shaped in part by the awareness that a system
of aesthetics is culture-bound and not as pure or natural or
I
unimportant as some Marxists (as well as Humanists) had
i
implied by their neglect of literary technique.
148
Popular versions of New Criticism argue that "New
Critics sought to ban politics from poetics and to provide
an aesthetic purity for literature and criticism" (Leitch
i
22), but the fact remains that the inception of the movement
was politically motivated as well. The New Critics rallied
I
against the Marxist political agenda with all the zeal of
pamphleteers, and successfully transplanted the question of
politics into the realm of critical action. Criticism
guided overtly by political agendas made the work of art an
ideological weapon, New Critics argued, and thus in Marxist
criticism, literature became a means of discussing the
1
I
politics of the critic, not the politics of literature.
I
Allen Tate, for instance, used this argument to justify
a type of criticism that would remain sensitive to the
cultural sources of literature without overtly preaching a
i
6
Contemporary political agenda. He argued for a criticism
that would expose the mechanisms of aesthetic production and
I
I
thereby lead to new ideas about the relation between the
artist and society. The resultant ideas would provide the
j
bases for building a fundamentally new view of the world (as
opposed to confirming a predetermined view) ("Reactionary
i
Essays" passim).
In the preface to his 1936 collection, Reactionary
Essays on Poetry and Ideas. Tate adequately testifies to the
pervasiveness of Marxism at the time and to the polemical
(or oppositional) origins of New Criticism. His book was
149
|reactionary" because it opposed Marxist criticism, which he
felt had become far too propagandistic. In Tate’s view, too
many modern literary critics were
using social theories to prove something about
poetry. It is a heresy that has, of course,
reared its head before, yet never more formidably
than now. We are trying to make a fine art
respectable by showing that after all it is only a
branch of politics: we are justifying poetry by
I "proving" that it is something else, (x)
Marxist criticism, Tate believed, had created nothing but
intellectual chaos because it did not offer "a rational
i
insight into the meaning of the present in terms of some
I
imaginable past implicit in our own lives" (4). Tate was
after a fixed body of ideas, patterns of sensibility that
I
derive from the poet’s immersion in culture. We read
poetry, he argued, to determine the processes whereby the
I
abstract ideas of culture are manifest in the personal
sensibility of the poet (19). Tate’s analysis of Emily
I
Dickinson’s poetry in Reactionary Essays, for example, did
not shy away from discussing the cultural or sociological
influences on her work; instead, he showed how these forces
|
were transformed by her imagination into sensations. Though
I
Tate shared the Marxist attention to scene, his primary aim
was to explicate the poem’s formal qualities, to explain as
i
objectively as possible "what the poets have done, not what
I
they ought to have done, and to guess what it was possible
I
I
for them to do in their time" (ix). To judge a work of art
I
on the basis of whether it supported a particular political
viewpoint was heretical, a senseless argument for the
timelessness of the cultural situation and a denial of the
i
t
l
imagination’s power to transform culture into unique
f
observations. Tate left it up to the general populace to
learn the possibilities for political and individual action
!
I
from the examples of past writers. Though his position
I
eventually hardened into an outright rejection of the belief
that poetry "explains" any experience beyond the dramatic
one of reading the text (Cain 97), in the early 1930s the
relations among the poet, poetry, scene, and reader were
still ambiguous, and the political implications of a
particular critical approach, still open to debate.
j
I
III• The Marxist-New Critical Dialectic in Counter-
j Statement: The Rhetoric of Form and Ideology
I
| Burke’s Counter-Statement (1931) and its critical
reception help put the differences between the Marxists and
the New Critics into better perspective and show him to be a
I
critic willing to walk on either side of the fence in his
effort to multiply the possibilities for critical action.
I
I
| Counter-Statement contains revisions of some of Burke’s
previously published essays. "Three Adepts of ’Pure*
Literature" is a compilation of his writing in 1921 on Remy
i
De Gourmont, Gustave Flaubert, and Walter Pater; Psychology
and Form" (1925), "The Poetic Process" (1925), and "Thomas
Mann and Andr6 Gide" (1930) have been revised only slightly.
The new work in Counter-Statement appears under the
headings, "The Status of Art," "Program," "Lexicon
I
Rhetoricae," and "Applications of the Terminology." Burke
j
identifies the book as "counter" because "each principle it
I
advocates is matched by an opposite principle flourishing
and triumphant today" (CS vii). The point of view, he says,
i
is "apologetic, negativistic, and even antinomian as regards
i
everything but art" (CS viii). Because Counter-Statement is
i
conceived as inquiry fueled by opposition, it would seem
appropriate to begin a discussion of Counter-Statement not
lay explicating its principal arguments but by rediscovering
|
the statement Burke was "countering."
I
Granville Hicks reviewed Counter-Statement in The New
Republic shortly after the book’s release in 1931, and the
I
subsequent exchange between him and Burke reveals some of
jthe major issues in contention in the contemporary critical
scene. Hicks criticizes Burke for making "technique" the
"only proper concern of the critic" (CRKB 20). According to
Burke, argues Hicks, artistry begins with a mood arising
j
|from a relationship between the writer and his or her
jenvironment. The artist’s aim is then to find a symbol for
i
jthis mood. As Hicks sees it, the process is one similar to
'that described by Allen Tate, who had argued that the writer
i
'transforms the sensations of the world into poetic forms
(Reactionary Essays passim), Hicks questions whether art
proceeds as Burke implies: "May not an author begin, for
i
example, with the desire to treat certain materials and
I
subsequently seek the best point of view— best for him, for
his mood— from which to treat them?" (CRKB 20). In other
words, Hicks believes that Burke’s artist is too passive
because the power of symbols is determined by factors beyond
his or her control, by desire and "universal experiences,"
i
l
Hicks’s artist brings a point of view to experience and
selects subject matter in accord with it. Working from
I
Burke’s premise, says Hicks, one cannot criticize the
artist’s symbols, but can only criticize the techniques used
I
to arrange them. Hicks would rather we critique the
artist’s point of view and the period that helped produce
I
it.
Burke’s response to this argument clarifies the point
i
of contention. He claims that Hicks’s argument applies only
i
jto the sections in Counter-Statement that discuss not what
i
effects should be produced, but how effects are produced
^(primarily to the "Lexicon Rhetoricae" section)
j ( "Counterblasts on ’Counter-Statement’" 101). Such an
analysis falls under the province of rhetoric, Burke argues,
I
jto which a moral imperative is not proper. (In 1931 Burke
views rhetoric primarily as a system for analyzing effects
i
and not social relations). Hicks would have Burke proceed
i
directly to a critique not of the means of representation
153 *
but of the material being represented and would have him
I
evaluate the poet on the basis of whether such a
j !
representation is an adequate interpretation of life. What
i ^
Hicks fails to mention is that he believes the only adequate
!
interpretation of life is the Marxist one (a point he makes
in his 1933 essay "The Crisis in American Criticism")— and
this interpretation places primary emphasis on the
i
I
individual’s relationship to material conditions and the
class structure. Marxist critics sought to reveal the
ideological biases that determined a particular artist’s
productions.
Burke contends that the "Program" section of Counter-
1
Statement does elucidate what effects should be produced by
artists at the present time. (The "Program" section argues
that art is "eternal" and "historical"— meaning that the
|
artist’s "innovations today must be, in some way, the
i
humanistic or cultural counterpart of the external changes
i
brought about by industrialism or mechanization" (CS 108)).
i
But to Hicks, such a discussion of the artist’s
j
■identification with a scene is only an afterthought for
Burke, and is "invalidated from the start" by Burke’s
.aesthetic, which makes universal experiences the material of
the artist. That Counter-Statement appears disunified to
Hicks should not be surprising given the paradox that Burke
I
has presented us with. "There are two general bases of
critical exhortation," he writes. "(1) We may have a
154
concept of an ideal situation, and insist that literature be
written in accordance with this ideal situation; or (2) we
may have a concept of a contemporary situation, and insist '
I
that literature be written in accordance with this
contemporary situation" (CS 184). On the one hand, we can
view art’s appeal as the result of formal principles based
I
upon basic human desires, a position Burke calls
i
"absolutist" (CS 184). On the other hand, we can judge the
work of art by its capacity for helping people (readers and
writers) come to terms with their historical situation, a
(
position Burke calls "relativist" (CS 184) The first method
leans toward intrinsic criticism, e.g. close reading,
I
attention to technique, and symbolization. The second
method, toward extrinsic criticism, including sociological,
I
psychological, and political analysis.
i Hicks understandably questioned the unity of Counter-
j
I
Statement as a critical stance, since it wavers between New
' |
Critical and Marxist approaches. But Burke did not leave
the text as divided as Hicks’s account makes it seem,
particularly if we view it from another perspective, as an
!
attempt to synthesize a critical method from a dialogic
i
representation of competing positions. As early as 1922 he
|
wrote to Cowley of his concern for attempting a "more
constructive type of criticism, not merely attack the
J
existing, but to build up a counter-structure" (SC May 5,
i
jl922). Counter-Statement is an attempt to expose the
155
differences between rival systems, and then to build a
system that recognizes the complexities of alternative
viewpoints while providing a means for moving beyond them or
a justification for starting over when situations
necessitate change. Whether it is "unified” is of less
i
importance than whether it adequately recognizes polarities
I
I
within a union of opposites.
To understand Burke’s method requires more focused
attention to which systems he sets against each other. The
t
Marxist-New Critical dialectic is one important pairing, but
there are others just as pivotal for Burke. The first
grouping is a triad that helps him move toward a more
complex account of the relations between rhetoric, form, and
ideology. Counter-Statement begins with "Three Adepts of
I
’Pure’ Literature," and sets Flaubert, Pater, and De
t
Gourmont beside each other in a three part discussion of the
aesthetic that informs their writing. Burke argues after
I
having read Flaubert’s letters that Flaubert sought pure
effects, in his words, to write a "book about nothing, a
book without any exterior tie, but sustained by the internal;
force of its style" (CS 6). The curious aspect of
Flaubert’s art, however, was that while he desired an art of
methodological triumph, an art free of all subject matter,
he instead "devoted years on end to the patient accumulation
I
of detail, of those minute accuracies which his disciples
I
look upon as the basis of his intentions" (CS 7). But ,
156
Flaubert sought, Burke contends in one of his characteristic
i
j'stress-shiftings, " not the "verbalization of experience"
I
but the "verbalization of experience" (7). While he sought
pure forms for the sake of conveying pure effects, Flaubert
instead over-burdened himself with information because of
I
his conflicting desire to make readers feel his books
"materially" (C2S 7). Later in Counter-Statement Burke
converts this example into the maxim that "[a]trophy of form
follows hypertrophy of information" (144); realism,
proletarian or otherwise, slights formal experimentation,
which for Burke was necessary for counteracting the desire
I
for information for its own sake.
i Pater’s method has had an enormous influence on Burke’s
I
use of dialectic to generate multiple perspectives. Pater,
says Burke, saw a sentence as a happening, and in Pater’s
own words, prized the "resolution of an obscure idea into
its component parts" (CS 12). "He wrote fiction," Burke
i
continues, "as though he were writing essays. Other men
1
have sought the values of power and directness: Pater was
I
interested, rather, in laying numerous angles of approach"
(12). Ideas for Pater were possibilities, and he
manipulated them formally in his search for "those
changeless principles which might govern perpetual change"
|
(CS 15). The most important quality of Pater’s method was
I
his "predilection for the fluctuant"; ideas, once stated,
i
i
I
157
suggest counterparts, making for a process of continual
regeneration. For Pater,
The contemplation of permanent things served
primarily to strengthen his depiction of the
evanescent. Having thus a balance of thesis and
antithesis, the issue demanded no further
penetration on his part. He could content himself
with drawing out the effects of his subject, aware
that there was at least the indubitable and
! immediate certainty of his craft. (CS. 15),
Presenting subject-matter for its own sake is tangential to
f
I
the method of developing it heuristically with the
"changeless principles" that govern "perpetual change."
Burke follows Pater’s lead. Counter-Statement can be
i ------------------
viewed as his own effort to formulate changeless principles-
fin "Psychology and Form," "The Poetic Process," and
i
"Lexicon Rhetoricae"— and then to apply them to various
i
subjects, including the "art for art’s sake" doctrine (in
j'The Status of Art"), contemporary politics (in "Program"),
and the writing of criticism (in "Applications of the
Terminology").
I
Remy De Gourmont provided Burke with another way to
I
describe this discursive process. De Gourmont’s essay La
Dissociation des Idees argued that "Man associates his
I
f
ideas, not in accordance with logic, or verifiable
i
exactitude, but in accordance with his desires and his
interests" (qtd. in CS 22). De Gourmont used this method to
i
explore the various associations people make when presented
with any subject. (Virtue, for instance, suggests
recompense; wrong, punishment; God, goodness; morality,
immorality. The process of explication resembles
Aristotle’s exploration of oppositional terms in Book II of
I
the Rhetoric.) As Burke sees it, the dissociative method
was "clearly a companion discovery to symbolism, which
i
sought its effects precisely by utilizing, more
i
programmatically than in any other movement, the clusters of
i
associations surrounding the important words of a poem or
fiction" (CS 23-4). In addition, the process helps one
maintain one’s identity amid a confusing array of viewpoints
I
and avoid overzealous attachment to one perspective at the
I
expense of alternatives. In an important critique of de
Gourmont, however, Burke identifies the pernicious effect
I
the war had on his ability to sustain this dissociation of
a
ideas. This critique bears directly on Burke’s own struggle
to sustain the democratical temper at the outset of World
i
War II. American criticism would, Burke will contend in
I
1942, abandon its encouragement of multiple viewpoints and
ideological critique as it sought to counter the single-
mindedness of Hitler’s rhetoric. De Gourmont*s writing
suffered greatly during World War I, Burke contends, because
of a sudden blaze of patriotism--he attached himself too
I
^vehemently to nationalistic causes. As he puts it, "De
Gourmont, joining the swarm pour la patrie. trained his
I
learned barrage upon the barbarians. The spirit of irony,
i
of contradiction, of impersonality, that ultimate flavor of
159
lis versatility which made him an exquisite writer had
iiropped away" (CS 26). In the interest of making patriotic
gestures, De Gourmont abandoned discursiveness for
i
(dogmatism. Burke takes this lesson to heart; we see him in
Counter-Statement moving back and forth between competing
positions, Marxist, New Critical, rhetorical, and so on.
I
Beginning with an appreciation of the dialogic nature of
i
'language, the dissociative method forestalls ideological
rigidity, which inevitably leads to exclusion rather than
inclusion, to war rather than peace. Burke would rather
maintain his elusiveness than succumb to the momentary
!
security of dogma.
The concept of form is central to Burke’s purpose in
I
Counter-Statement. and leads him develop what Pater called
j I
the "changeless principles which might govern perpetual
change." Form is the "obscure idea" that Burke divides into
multiple parts and is thus a demonstration of the
|
dissociative method, as well as the formulation of a
perspective (on form) that enables further perspectives (on
the nature of appeals). In his preface to the first edition
he calls the "Lexicon Rhetoricae" section outlining his
theory of form "a kind of judgment machine, designed to
serve as an instrument for clarifying critical issues (not
so much for settling issues as for making the nature of a
controversy more definite)" (CS ix). The "form" itself of
"Lexicon Rhetoricae"--unfolding as a series of stops and
160
starts, restatements, shadings, recontextualizations— is
| i
that of a fugue, a dialectic of many voices. It is an
important Burkean essay not only because it conceptualizes a
machine for criticism using form as the guiding principle.
^(The manner of presentation foreshadows that of A Grammar of
I
Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives. A Grammar of Motives
I
explores the orientations of philosophical systems using thej
! i
dramatistic pentad as the generating set of terms. A j
Rhetoric of Motives ranges through the complexities of
social relations with "identification" as the key term.)
i For Burke, form is an "act," and not necessarily a <
I j
"shape" that precedes the production or reception of
i i
{discourse. More specifically, "[f]orm in literature is an J
[arousing and fulfillment of desires. A work has form in so
:far as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another I
I !
[part, to be gratified by the sequence" (CS 124). Form, as ]
'an act, has to do with the "gratification of needs" and is
"’correct* in so far as it gratifies the needs which it
creates. The appeal of the form in this sense is obvious:
form is. the appeal" (CS 138). To illustrate how this
aesthetic operates in discourse, Burke first divides form
I
into its five aspects: syllogistic, qualitative, repetitive,
conventional, and minor or incidental. Writers often
utilize the resources of each aspect of form to varying
degrees, so that any given text may exhibit features of all
five types. But each aspect of form has its characteristic
— 1 -6-1 -
principles. Briefly and without elaboration the five types
Lre as follows: Syllogistic progression creates expectations
and seeks to fulfill them. "Given certain things, certain
things must follow, the premises forcing the conclusion. In
so far as the audience, from its acquaintance with the
premises, feels the rightness of the conclusion, the work is
(formal" (CS 124). Qualitative progression puts the audience
into a state of mind after which another state of mind can
appropriately follow (CS 125). The audience senses the
(correctness of form because successive events share
I
qualities, such as tone, mood, imagery, or attitude.
|
(Burke’s "My Dear Mrs. Wurtelbach" and Eliot’s The Waste ;
I J
'Land demonstrate qualitative progression.) Repetitive form |
jis "the consistent maintaining of a principle under new i
guises" (CS 125). The repetition of an attitude in !
i
different situations, a rhyme scheme, a succession of |
I
images— all these are examples of repetitive form.
Conventional form is the appeal of form as form, an end in
itself, the effect of which arises from the audience’s
familiarity with its previous uses. It is thus anterior to
a reading, unlike syllogistic and progressive form, which
arise during the process (CS 126-7). Finally, minor forms
jinclude metaphor, paradox, disclosure, reversal, digression,
(syntax, etc. Their effects partially depend on their
function in the whole discourse, but minor forms do make
distinct, local appeals as form (CS. 127).
162
The rest of "Lexicon Rhetoricae" develops or
•individuates these aspects of form by exploring their
interrelationships and conflicts with each other in given
Lexts, their relation to poetic and prose rhythm, bodily
processes, universal experiences, ideology, symbols,
complexity and power, ritual, eloquence, manner, style,
ceremony, and finally to universality, permanence, and
I
perfection. Two of the more important discussions
i |
j ( important for their relevance to Burke’s later work and to j
l
criticism at large) concentrate on the relationship between
I |
form and ideology, and on the nature of the symbol. ^
^ Burke’s association of form with ideology is a crucial
Love because it establishes the connections between j
jtechnique, reader psychology, and culture. Form, Burke I
I
[says, arouses and fulfills desires, and therefore its
successful application depends upon what a reader considers ^
Jdesirable, which in turn depends upon a reader’s beliefs or
needs. Needs may be either biologically or socially
I
determined, but beliefs derive from social relations. !
Ideology is a "nodus of beliefs and judgments which the
artist can exploit for his effects" (CS 161). Form, then, i
i
is the means with which writers appeal to the ideological
backgrounds of their audience. Writers obtain their effects
by manipulating ideological assumptions. By utilizing forms
that arouse and gratify a person’s desires, they promote
identification and consubstantiality (which become for Burke,
163
in A Rhetoric of Motives the primary aims of rhetoric).
When form is "correct," i.e. when readers are led to
conclusions both prepared for by the particular text and
valued in their ideological systems, authors encourage
attitudes in line with their own and can thus determine
someone's response (CS 163).
Naturally, such exchanges break down, says Burke,
jecause "an ideology is not a harmonious structure of
aeliefs or assumptions; some of its beliefs militate against
others, and some of its standards militate against our
nature" (CS 163). Further, ideologies are not necessarily
uniform within a given culture, so that in any piece of
writing there exists the possibility that form will not be
appropriate or correct to everyone within the general
i
i
confines of an ideological system. Ideology is also
constantly changing: "The shifts in ideology being
i
jcontinuous, not only from age to age but from person to
person, the individuation of universal forms through
jspecific subject-matter can bring the formal principles
'themselves into jeopardy" (CS! 147). That is, particular
forms and their effects will fluctuate as cultural scenes
change, making it impossible or especially difficult for one
generation to fully understand the formal appeals of
previous generations, or even for different fields of
inquiry to engage in meaningful dialogue.
164
Burke takes a risk here, one that threatens to
undermine his entire argument, since he suggests that even
universal forms may be so only within a relatively stable
Lultural tradition. The conventional forms that appeal to
one age may not appeal to the next. What appears to be
syllogistic form to some may hardly seem syllogistic to
others who do not share the beliefs to which an author makes
the appeal.2 This argument implicitly challenges Humanists
and Impressionists who would assert the universal character
of particular literary appeals. Burke does not dismiss
(entirely the validity of aesthetic appeal, however, because
ideologies can be shared by more than a few individuals,
enabling some exchange of ideas (whether such an exchange
jean be direct or free of ambiguity is perhaps not as J
iobvious). As Burke puts it, "any reader surrounds each word)
jand each act in a work of art with a unique set of his own j
previous experiences . . . communication existing in the ;
I
’margin of overlap* between the writer’s experience and the
reader’s" (CS 78-9). From this perspective, the Humanist
and the Impressionist behave as critics attempting to
prescribe the areas of experience that should be present in
this overlap of sensibilites.
Considering the relationship between form and "the
symbol" further will help clarify Burke’s view of language
as symbolic action, and tighten the fundamental association
he makes between form, the generation of subject-matter, and
eloquence. Granville Hicks argues that how the discovery of
the symbol involves the question of form in Counter-
Statement is never made quite clear (CRKB 19), and uses his
observation to charge Burke with being too narrowly New
Critical. But because this issue is a critical one for him,
he spends considerable time in Counter-Statement arguing
jthat the symbol is "the verbal parallel to a pattern of
^experience" (CS 152), and that form is "a way of
experiencing" (CS 143). Symbolism, he argues, had, "in
emphasizing the emotional connection of ideas and images, . j
i
. . tended to suppress their commoner experimental or j
’logical* connections" (CS 68). In response, Burke
identifies the principles of form as the basic forms of
i
thought through which the symbol makes an appeal, a f
formulation that situates the Platonic universals not in
heaven but in the human mind (CS. 48), as psychological
I
universals that are the "conditions of appeal" (CS 48). The
interdependence of the symbol and form for Burke is evident
in the following example:
The difference between the selectivity of a dream
and the selectivity of art is that the dream obeys
no principle of selection but the underlying i
pattern, whereas art, which expands by the j
ramifying of the Symbol, has the Symbol as a ]
principle of selection. (CS 158)
'An artist conveys to readers the emotional pattern
underlying the symbol utilizing the resources of form. Both
form and symbols thus act as generative principles, as
166
relationships to be repeated in varying details (CS 61).
Eloquence being the ideal aim of the artist, Burke argues,
"One work is more eloquent than another if it contains
Symbolic and formal charges in greater profusion" (CS 165). ;
t
'Sarlier, as we saw in "Psychology and Form," eloquence was
somewhat ambiguously defined as "the result of that desire ,
In the artist to make a work perfect by adapting it in every
minute detail to the racial appetites" (CS 41). In "Lexicon
Rhetoricae," eloquence is the process of multiplying the
formal and symbolic significance of patterns of experience,
bf subject-matter, a "constant attempt to renew Symbolic andl
I
formal appeal throughout the work" (CS 166).
I
The purpose of eloquence is the issue that Burke takes I
■up in the chapter entitled "Program," and a discussion of
I - J
I
this argument there rounds out my argument that Counter-
i :
Statement mediates between New Critical and Marxist criticalj
agendas. Because art is eternal and historical (CS 107),
the cluster of conditions with which eloquence may work
varies from age to age. In "Program" Burke "speculates as
to which emotions and attitudes should be stressed, and
which slighted, in the aesthetic adjustment to the
t
particular conditions of today" (CS 107). In the 1930s, he
argues, the aesthetic needed is "anti-practical" and
i
idemocratic because the trend in the United States has been
toward greater economic efficiency, which leads to the over-
centralization of power— a form of fascism. Against this
167
tendency Burke proposes an aesthetic that would be driven
aack to democracy, a system of government
based upon the fear that central authority becomes
bad authority— democracy, organized distrust,
"protest made easy," a babble of discordant
voices, a colossal getting in one’s own way—
democracy, now endangered by the apostles of hope
who would attack it for its "inefficiency,"
whereas inefficiency is the one thing it has in
its favor. (CS 114)
Art can have a therapeutic effect on culture by adopting a
set of attitudes that confuse the code which underlies the
commercial enterprise and privileges the journalistic
aesthetic (to which much of Counter-Statement is "counter"),
not by adopting the predominant emphasis on efficiency (an
J I
emphasis that has, Burke says, separated art from life on
the grounds of art’s inefficiency (CS 63-91)), but . The
precise relation between the aesthetic Burke proposes and
the political system is, perhaps, only metaphorical; or as
he puts it in his preface to the second edition, a
"hypothetical translation of Bohemianism, or Aestheticism,
into its political equivalents" (CS xiii). The implications
for criticism, however, are real because rather than
proposing fixed standards of taste or proper political
^viewpoints, Burke’s aesthetic advocates a return to
inconclusiveness sustained by a method that generates
alternative perspectives for the sake of destabilizing
I
criticism itself. The democratic principle applied to
criticism as a "Cult of the Perhaps" argues for the
168
"cultural value of fear, distrust, and hypochondria" (CS
•xii). The implication here is that extant critical systems
'have over-zealously argued for a particular brand of art,
Lnd in so doing categorically rule out as unfit brands of
I
Jart that challenge critical standards, which remain
junresponsive to the changing needs dictated by the
'historical situation.
Counter-Statement closes with Burke’s attempt to
j
i
recover a richer definition of rhetoric, one that would
identify any effective literature as rhetorical and would
i
i
unite the various factions in critical circles. The
resistance to rhetoric has been, he argues, a rejection of
certain ceremonious appeals that have ceased to be
effective. The result has been the rejection of any
["pronounced formal contrivances" that conflict with popular 1
forms, which themselves may have temporarily enabled new
emphases but now behave as restrictions rather than options
i
(CS 211). Burke argues that,
i
The major tenet of eloquence (maximum of formal
and Symbolic "charge") must be reaffirmed if prose
qua prose is to be enjoyed. Yet such a
reaffirmation must overcome the resistance of
"categorical expectancy," must temporarily at
least violate the principles of conventional form,
! must risk seeming "unnatural" until the present
! decrees as to the "natural" are undone. (CS 211)
Eloquence is rhetorical felicity, not for its own sake, but
I
!for the sake of adapting one’s self to the vicissitudes of
the present. Rather than acquiescing to the strictures of
169
critical propriety, Burke advocates that writers (critics
and artists) use all available resources to construct a
well-rounded interpretation of the world, which requires
much more than stylistic fluency.
IV. Burke’s Radical Critiques of Americanism and CommiiniHm
Burke’s participation in the 1935 American Writers’
Congress has received considerable critical attention over
the years from the likes of Daniel Aaron (Writers on the
Left), Malcolm Cowley (The Dream of the Golden Mountains).
Matthew Josephson (Infidel in the Temple), Frank Lentricchia
j(Criticism and Social Change). James T. Farrell (Yet Other j
Waters. a novel), and Jerre Mangione (An Ethnic at Large). I
I
I
At this gathering of American writers who aligned themselves,
against the "prevailing dangers of war, fascism, and the
extinction of culture" (Hart 9-10). Burke suffered the
public wrath of Michael Gold and Joseph Freeman after
reading his paper "Revolutionary Symbolism in America," in
which he proposed, among other things, that the socialist
movement in America substitute the symbol "the people" for
"the worker." As Burke recalls it, "[Wjhen the time came
for criticism--0 my god! It was a slaughter! Mike Gold and
Joe Freeman— they just tore me apart: ’We have a snob among
us’— and so on."3 The hostility of the audience was short
lived (the following day Burke was named unanimously to the
new League of American Writers’ executive committee), but
170 |
Drutal nonetheless. The severity of the reaction to Burke’s
speech exposes the dualism that he was mediating at the
time; namely, as Frank Lentricchia puts it, "Burke simply
;
negated and at the same time preserved the Marxist-New
Critical controversy in a dialectical maneuver that insisted
that the literary was always a form of social action,
lowever rarely it might be recognized as such" (Criticism
and Social Change 27). He refuses to separate the political^
aims (which he bravely identified as "propagandistic" aims)
of the Communist Party from the agency— the forms and i
I I
symbols— with which such aims were furthered. And, in one j
of Burke’s typical meta-critical moves, he discusses the ^
rhetorical aspects of socialist criticism, in its function !
L s propaganda and as a means for promoting social unity. j
J Notably, Burke’s earlier contribution to the New Masses
in 1934, "My Approach to Communism" does not address the j
rhetorical aspects of Communism. In fact, when he discusses
the "esthetic" approach to Communism, he examines the
connection between poetry and stability. His argument in
this essay depends uncharacteristically on a behaviorist
model. Capitalism, because it confuses expectations, makes
for instability. Most importantly, in a concluding
pronouncement that sounds like the argument of a socialist-
'Humanist, Burke writes, "great instability both interferes
I
with the firm establishment of the moral-esthetic
superstructure which the artist draws upon and often imparts
171
an inferior cultural quality to whatever fragments of such a
superstructure are established” (20).
A closer look at Burke’s 1935 speech and the response
to it reveals his willingness to adopt alternative
perspectives and break down "stable” categories for the sake
Lf either gaining a better perspective on a specific subject
or for gaining allegiance to a cause. At the outset, Burke
makes the observation that "When considering how people have
cooperated, in either conservative or revolutionary
movements of the past, we find that there is always some
unifying principle about which their attachments as a group
are polarized" (87). Such unifying principles are, he
i
argues, myths that help maintain communal relationships,
"our basic psychological tools for working together" (87)
In revolutionary periods, people drop their allegiance to
the myths, or symbols, that had previously promoted social
cooperation, and search for rival symbols to take their
place. The 1930s are, Burke goes on, such a period;
^Communists are trying to replace the symbol of bourgeois
^nationalism with the symbol of class, or, more specifically,
replace the symbol of nationalism with the symbol of the
worker (88). Having established this premise, Burke unloads
with this statement: "I shall consider this matter purely
from the standpoint of propaganda" (88; Burke’s emphasis);
the symbol thus becomes "a device for spreading areas of
allegiance" (89). His move is a controversial one for
172
several reasons. First, the notion that symbolism could be
L useful device in revolutionary action undercut the belief
that economic conditions motivated such developments.
j
Second, the term propaganda, like rhetoric, carries with it
Jconsiderable negative baggage, being generally thought of as
Jan ill-willed appeal with a hidden political agenda. Yet
'Burke argues that proletarian literature, like all
i
literature, is a form of social action, and it would be
i
advisable for writers to use all the linguistic resources
necessary to promote the kind of social action they desire,
* particularly when they write to groups who may not share j
their perspectives. j
Burke provides several fairly specific reasons why "the!
i
people" is a more effective symbol than "the worker.” First
I
of all, "the people" points "more definitely in the
direction of unity" because it "contains the ideal. the I
i
ultimate classless feature which the revolution would bring |
about" (90). Second, the acceptance of "the people" as the
basic symbol "also has the great virtue [in] that it makes
for less likelihood of schematization on the part of our
writers" (90). For Burke this is an important point. The
writer who writes only of worker suffering and revolt
^enlists sympathies, but the writer who writes of all the
I
Ipeople (including the bourgeois) also incorporates our
jideals, which makes for greater allegiance. "The complete
propagandist," he continues, "would take an interest in as
173
many imaginative, aesthetic, and speculative fields as he
can handle" (90-1) and would weave his sympathy for the
oppressed and antipathy toward oppressive institutions into
such inquiry. In addition, the writer should show a "keen
interest in every manifestation of our cultural development"
and "encompass as many desirable features of our cultural
heritage as possible" (91). Finally, "We convince a man by
reason of the values which we and he hold in common" (91).
Generally, revolutionary writers are led too early into
Jantagonistic modes of thought and expression, which appeal
only to those already convinced. Instead, it is the
i
propagandizer*s work to "plead with the unconvinced, which i
i
requires him to use their vocabulary, their values, their j
symbols, insofar as this is possible (92). j
; I
The method Burke advocates here is the trading back andj
forth of symbols between opposing systems. Such a dialectic!
does not occur materially, as for Marx, but in the realm of
language. Revolution is not merely a product of economic or
armed warfare, but must be accompanied by a shift in a
group’s allegiance to symbols. The writer can only shift
such allegiance by working within the cultural and
historical fabric that makes up the psychology of the
audience. Once again Burke calls for the unity-in-
difference that is the ultimate aim of rhetoric. And once
again, he argues that the way to this end is through the
multiplication of perspectives: the imaginative writer
174
should "seek to propagandize his cause by surrounding it
with as full a cultural texture as he can manage" (93).
Such a move was too risky for those in Burke’s audience
who believed that the revolution must be accomplished with
I
more than words, that "the worker" was more than a symbol.
Michael Gold, for instance, could not accept the idea "that
|the class struggle is a myth, or that the working class is a
myth" (Simons and Melia 275).4 Proletarian literature ought
to "show the concrete facts" (276), he concludes, and, "We
! i
must use this [literature] as a final and clinching j
(argument— this picture of real life, of real working class J
| <
struggle" (276). Literature, here, becomes the agency for j
i
^delivering reality, and the reality is unequivocally one of j
hierarchy, class struggle, and oppression. Literature is a
reflection of life. Burke cannot accept Gold’s equation;
for Burke the effects of a poem may be real, but the
relationships expressed by a poem "cannot be pointed to, in
the simple objective way in which you could point to a stone
or a house" (Simons and Melia 279).
Friedrich Wolf follows Michael Gold’s lead, then
charges Burke with continuing the policy of Hitlerism.
According to Wolf, "Utilization of the myth of ’das Volk.’
the people, is an essential part of the reformist approach.
In my own country it has directly resulted in the fascists
taking power. The symbol ’worker’ must be reserved to
indicate the preponderant mass of the population" (276-77).
175
Joseph Freeman agrees with Wolf, saying that the symbol of
"the people" came with the "bourgeois revolution" and was a
means of concealing the "actual living antagonism between
jthe social classes" (277). "The people" is a vague symbol,
says Freeman, and, "We must not encourage such myths. We
Lre not interested in the myth. We are interested in
revealing the reality" (277). The important thing to note
in these objections by Wolf and Freeman is not the quibbling
Lver which term to pick. Rather, Wolf and Freeman each view
the symbol of "the worker" as a direct representation of
reality, whereas "the people" is merely the ideologically
charged fantasy of the bourgeois. This claim for the
objectivity of one’s discourse is an assertion of power overt
| i
words, a negation of the ambiguous signifier. Burke chooses
to view both symbols equally, and selects between them on
the basis of their potential effects, which in turn depend
I
i
upon the ideological backgrounds of the audience. His
method is both New Critical and sociological. His Marxist-
minded peers refuse to make language the object of inquiry
because they feel the problem is not with words but with
peoples’ apprehension of the truth.
i
Burke’s entry in Partisan Review and Anvil * s symposium
on "Marxism and the American Tradition" (1936) stands beside
those of William Carlos Williams, Theodore Dreiser, Waldo
Frank, Joseph Freeman, and others. Freeman continues his
argument that Marxism is a "universal idea— vast fruitful,
176
illuminating, and energising" and "best explains the world
in which we live" (16). Frank balks at the symposium’s
jtopic, which he perceives as a publicity stunt (11).
Williams argues that the American "democratic spirit" will
view Marxism as merely another "phase of force opposed to
liberalism" (14). Dreiser views Americanism as "an illusion
of national individuality" (3) that people use to combat
radical ideas. Burke joins the fray by asserting the
necessity of defining Americanism not in opposition to
Marxism, but as a supplemental system of meanings. While
the other contributors, with the exception of Williams, had
seen Marxism as the ideal philosophy to replace Americanism,
Burke straddles the fence. He argues that Marxism does not ,
| i
prove its value by what it must categorically reject !
I
(Americanism) but by what new material it can assimilate
'(11). In a move to salvage Americanism from Marxist
conquest, he proposes that Marxism be assimilated into I
American philosophy. "It is American," he writes, "to use
anything that one feels might be of value in remedying one’s
situation" (10). In yet another attempt to convert
polarities into a union of opposites, Burke reasserts the
I
need to extend the Americanism-Marxism dialectic.
V. "Sour Grapes Plus": Rhetoric and the Comic Perspective
Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose and
Attitudes toward History are the two post-Depression
177
companion texts Burke wrote in the early and mid-1980s. He
^describes their relationship in his 1953 afterword to
Counter-Statement as follows: Permanence and Change thinks
Lf communication in terms of ideal cooperation, whereas
!
Attitudes toward History would characterize tactics and
ipatterns of conflict typical of actual human associations
(216). Permanence and Change pivots on the Nietzschean
concept of "perspective by incongruity," a "kind of vision
I i
got by seeing one order in terms of another" (CS 216).
Lttitudes toward History hinges about one particular
perspective by incongruity— "bureaucratization of the
imaginative," which Burke identifies as a "formula for the i
Imperfections that arise in human societies when ideal ends I
I I
I
are translated into material means" (CS 216). The
development from book to book is a crucial one in Burke’s
j 1
thinking because by the end of Permanence and Change he has :
I
progressed from an innocuous opening where he claims that
"all living things are critics" (5) to this ominous closing
statement, which I quote at length in order to preserve the
mood:
In these troublesome antics, we may even find it
wise on occasion to adopt incongruous perspectives
for the dwarfing of our impatience. We in cities
rightly grow shrewd at appraising man-made
institutions--but beyond these tiny concentration
points of rhetoric and traffic, there lies the
eternally unsolvable Enigma, the preposterous fact
that both existence and nothingness are equally
unthinkable. Our speculations may run the whole
qualitative gamut, from play, through reverence,
even to an occasional shiver of cold metaphysical
_________ dread--for always the Eternal Enigma is there,
178
right on the edges of our metropolitan bickerings,
stretching outward to interstellar infinity and
inward to the depths of the mind. And in this
staggering disproportion between man and no-man,
there is no place for purely human boasts of
grandeur or for forgetting that men build their
cultures by huddling together, nervously
loquacious, at the edge of an abyss. (PC 272)
Recognizing fully that human communication is far from
perfect, and that our orientations to language often lead us
clown unforeseen pathways with unexpected consequences, Burkej
jthen selects "bureaucratization of the imaginative" in j
i
Attitudes toward History as the "incongruous perspective"
with which we can momentarily ease our impatience with the <
word. Without presuming to fully represent the complex
arguments in these two books, the following explication of
I j
|"perspective by incongruity" and Burke’s favorite
application of the technique to American politics
^demonstrates the evolution of his idea that resistance to
jdualistic, either/or thinking can help us resolve conflict
I i
I
without resorting to war. The method he advocates is
pragmatic with regard to means, rhetorical in the sense that
it acts to utilize "new meaning," and democratic because it
encourages open-ended dialectic.
Burke’s process of selecting the method of perspective j
by incongruity begins in Permanence and Change with the
question of orientation, and is initially prompted by his
recognition that "the very power of criticism has enabled
man to build up cultural structures so complex that still
179
greater powers of criticism are needed" (PC 5). Thorstein
Veblen’s clever reversal, "invention is the mother of
necessity," leads Burke to conclude that critical capacity
not only increases the range of solutions, but also the
■range of problems, and hence we need to interpret our
■interpretations. The problem is, says Burke, is that we
suffer from what Veblen calls "trained incapacity": "that
state of affairs whereby one's very abilities can function
L s blindness" (PC 7). In other words, one’s method or
I ~
"discipline" naturally forecloses alternative perspectives.
What usually happens, Burke continues, is that critics will
i
perceive such incapacities as "escapes" or "ignorance" or a
rejection of "reality." But Burke would have us view
I i
"method" as an orientation, a basis of expectancy, "a bundle
of judgments as to how things were, how things are, and how I
| ]
they may be" (PC 14). Orientations need not be permanently
■fixed; when they are, however, we can perceive errors in
interpretation, which often exhibit the "heads-I-win, tails-
jyou-lose" argument. For example, a "disciplined" Freudian,
he explains, would identify as a rationalization a priest’s
juse of Church vocabulary to explain his actions, whereas the
same Freudian would identify as "analysis" his or her own
juse of psychoanalytic terms to explain behavior, even though
both methods follow the same procedure (PC 17). Burke later
calls this habit "occupational psychoses," which is John
Dewey’s description of how one's livelihood promotes certain
specific patterns of thought that further its productive and
i
distributive operations (PC 38). The artist, for another
(example, "builds and manipulates the intellectual and
^imaginative superstructure which furthers the appropriate
I
'habit-patterns useful to his economic system" (PC 40) This
tendency, says Burke, may explain the flourishing of
"success literature" in a capitalistic system (PC 41). The
paradox results from the fact that "A way of seeing is also
L way of not seeing--a focus upon object A involves a
I i
I
neglect of object B" (PC 49). In other words, an artist’s |
^focus on social mobility may divert attention from the '
strictures on mobility that oppress the proletariat. )
Burke begins to translate the concept of orientation I
■into critical terms when he discusses "Piety as a System- !
i i
i j
Builder." Piety, he says, is "the sense of what properly I
! I
goes with what" (PC 74). A pious person brings "all the
I
significant details of the day into coordination, relating |
[them integrally with one another by a complex interpretive
J
network" (PC 75). Piety is "integration. guided by a
scrupulous sense of the appropriate, which, once we dismiss
our personal locus of judgment, would seem to bear the marks'
I
of great conscientiousness" (PC 77). Criticism is a pious
activity, Burke implies, because it is an orientation that
may guide, or misguide, our understanding of literature.
The theological overtones here are clearly intentional. In
the religious sphere, piety would be devotion to the Divine
181
Logos— the paradigm that leads the congregation of
jdisciplined or trained devotees— to spiritual transcendence.
To preserve this motivational emphasis, the pious person
divides the world of action into polarities— e.g.,
moral/immoral— then coordinates the symbolic activities
prescribed by his religion into a unified whole. Burke
extends piety to secular life, to that psychoanalysis is, in
religious terms, "secular conversion." Literary critics, in
their tendency toward piety, often dismiss incongruous
perspectives on (or in) texts for the sake of preserving the1
[ i
I i
jintegrity of their (or the writer’s) orientation. Burke j
'does not condemn anyone for being pious, of course. Piety
| 1
seems to be as inevitable as breathing. But what he finds J
troubling, in his own work and in criticism in general, is
the delimitation of explanations, particularly at moments !
i
when a particular system strains to accommodate contrary ;
! t
information. He likens the situation to that of the
devotee, who, "at time of weakness and doubt, when his own
convictions are not enough to sustain him, is kept under
discipline by the walls of his monastery" (PC 79).
Burke wants us to address these questions: How, given
our piety, do we discover new meanings? How do we avoid
following the flock when our judgment tells us its headed in
I
the wrong direction? We can, following Nietzsche’s example,
jbecome purposely impious, which involves persistent
reorientation and the "transvaluation of all values" (PC
182
87). The Nietzschean method, characterized by a "dartlike”
quality, utilizes the concept of "perspective by
incongruity." Burke calls the technique a "cult of
perspectives" because it extends "the use of a term by
j I
taking it from the context in which it was habitually used
and applying it to another" (PC 89). Perspective by
incongruity works like metaphor, "revealing unsuspected
I
I
'connectives" and "exemplifying relationships between objects
j
jwhich our customary rational vocabulary has ignored" (PC
90). The "customary rational vocabulary" Burke speaks of I
I i
here is determined by the ideology governing the selection j
Lnd application of terminology, the agencies of production
j i
and the body of knowledge to which writers must adapt their |
jdiscourse. "Trained incapacity" is an example of
perspective by incongruity because "[o]ur notions of what
^goes with training naturally suggest capacity rather than j
incapacity" (PC 91).
In Henri Bergson’s work, Burke explains, perspective by
incongruity makes metaphysics into a process of drawing
verbal distinctions (logical or conceptual) that need not be
justified by the nature of the universe. In fact, a
metaphysical distinction is "an elaborate system for
jreconciling differences which never existed in the first
place, but were invented for purposes of convenience" (PC
j93). Burke then uses Bergson to make the point that
slanguage is by nature deconstructive; to paraphrase Burke’s
example: A planet moves in a path, and this path is
jconceptualized as a synthesis of tangential and centripetal
forces. But the actual motion is. the synthesis, and it is
nothing else. We conceptualize it as a union of antitheses
because speech is necessarily blocklike, pulling bits of
!
reality apart and treating them as whole. Metaphysics
Jsolves problems not by treating the motion itself as
reality, but by substituting the concepts of centripetal and
centrifugal forces— the aim being their verbal synthesis.
J
The validity of such a synthesis in no way affects the
i
Jobject we are seeking to describe, nor should such a
Jsynthesis be mistaken for reality (PC 93). The purpose of
Burke’s explanation, as derived from Bergson, is this: The
nearest verbal approach to reality we can make is through
| '
the cultivation of alternative perspectives or contradictory!
I
concepts. Such a procedure may "give us something more |
f
indicative than is obtainable by the assumption that our
conceptualizations of events in nature are real" (PC 94).
What Burke is pointing toward here is the idea that we
cannot distinguish reality from our means of representing
it, at least not verbally. To claim otherwise is to
maintain the illusion that our language has the power to
transform nature. And despite the existence of multiple
'means of verbal representation, we have
psychotically made the corresponding readjustment
of assuming that the universe itself will abide by
our rules of discussion and give us its
_________ revela£jL_ons_ in a cogent manner. Our notion of
causality as a succession of pushes from behind is;
thus a disguised way of insisting that experience ;
abide by the conventions of a good argument. (PC
99)
lAn explanation or demonstration is judged a success only to
the extent that it satisfies the requirements of its initial
I
propositions, yet paradoxically we often proceed as if
I
■results are irrespective of means. Even in science, Burke
I
argues, people go on praising objectivity despite "many
jsignificant rival analyses" and a "Babel of assertions,"
each voice competing for superiority (PC 101). What we
i t
need, he argues, is an adequate system for critiquing our i
jsystems of explanation, for revealing the spots where ^
Jambiguities arise or contradictions hide, or for j
'systematically converting values into countervalues for the
j
jsake of discovering something we may have missed while j
insisting upon the validity of our interpretations.
i
Burke knows that such perspectivalism can be endless,
I
yet he remains cautiously optimistic that we can rediscover
Ithe values necessary for a better life. As he puts it,
In considering the profusion of perspectives, of
course, we treat need and opportunity as
interchangeable. The''crumbling and conflict of
values certainly puts new burdens upon the artist-
-but on the other hand, it facilitates certain
kinds of artistic endeavor which, in a stabilized
structure, might be possible to the wayward
individual but would not be very highly rated by
his group. In the confusion of a vocabulary (and
of the social texture behind it) writers not only
lose old effects but gain new ones. (PC 116)
185
Burke makes his plea for perspective by incongruity at a
time when the reigning symbol of achievement is "progress."
'In a world that privileges progress over cooperation,
j !
communication suffers miserably. So Burke proposes a
"philosophy of being" that would replace the metaphor of
progress with the metaphor of a norm. the notion that people
I
have remained fundamentally the same despite the
fluctuations of history, and that they all seek "the good
jlife" (PC 163 ) .
The qualification he makes, however, is that there are ,
many ways of pursuing the good life. Burke himself chooses
to live the life as the critic’s critic on a farm in New j
Jersey, on the frontier of big business’s mecca— New York. I
He resists being "converted" by the incantatory symbolism of|
| i
capitalist culture. That Burke deliberately set himself up !
on the edge of commuting distance is, in the physical sense,
an effort to ensure perspective by incongruity— agrarian
being essentially incongrous with industrial efficiency.
Burke does not propose supplanting capitalist philosophy
with another philosophy. Instead, he advocates an
alternative metaphor— one that is both democratic in its
relevance for the masses and rhetorical in its emphasis on
the appeal of poetics: "The conclusion we should draw from
our thesis is a belief that the ultimate metaphor for
discussing the universe and man’s relations to it must be
the poetic or dramatic metaphor" (PC 263).
| The full implications of the dramatic metaphor are
addressed more fully in Attitudes toward History, but Burke
<3oes sketch some possible orientations in Permanence and
I i
Change that point to where he may be headed. He starts by
recognizing other possible metaphors for describing human
relations— Aristotle * s "political" being, Rousseau’s "signer
of the social contract," Nietzsche’s "man as warrior"— but
he contends that the dramatic metaphor subsumes and goes !
I I
beyond them all. The dramatic metaphor begins with the
I
notion of composition. the premise that social life, I
■including art, is an architectonic process, a problem of j
appeal, that may be described with reference to
i !
|"communicative, sympathetic, and propitiatory factors" in
addition to tests of utility {PC 264; Burke’s emphasis). .
The dramatic metaphor could also help people remember that
I '
their "assertions are necessarily socialized by revision, an
attitude which might make for greater patience" (PC 265;
I
Burke’s emphasis). Finally, the dramatic metaphor
emphasizes the "participant aspect of action rather than its
competitive aspect" (PC 266; Burke’s emphasis). By viewing
.people as "communicative participants" in society, we can
I
begin the process of discovering the bases of disagreement
and cooperation. Burke’s argument for democratic criticism
views people as actors, as participants in self-legislation,
an orientation necessary in a scene replete with conflict,
I
^alienation, poverty, and ideological and political war.
187
Empowering the public’s capacity for action by involving
them in the political process, which Burke says poetry can
do, would require the bureaucracy to accept the negotiation
Lnd socialization of differences. Burke’s emphasis on
participatory politics, derived symbolically from the
I
Marxist plea to the people, is a call for the private
; i
jtransvaluation of popular ideology. Burke would have us
view people as poets who compose, translate, and revise the
] I
material of social relationships.5 And because j
communication depends upon the formulation of appeals, we j
I
end up borrowing concepts from rhetoric, the "art of appeal"!
j (PC 266). It is through the poetic or dramatic metaphor, J
Burke concludes, that we gain "an invaluable perspective j
•from which to judge the world of contingencies" (ATH 266).
Human relations are always dangerously uncertain and j
[complex; when we rely on the industrial economist’s i
I I
restricted version of utility as the justification for
improving these relations, our descriptions of social
behavior move toward the "militant end of the combat-action-
cooperation spectrum" (ATH 269). The Depression had made it
[abundantly clear that progress, when advanced by judgments
of economic utility, led to competitive speculation, which
in turn created side-effects no one could foresee and few
could recover from. Burke chooses the dramatic metaphor as
a healthy corrective because it views people as participants
in the cooperative act of cultural re-formation. Despite
188
lis enthusiasm, however, Burke remains uneasy. Permanence
and Change ends, appropriately perhaps, with people
f'huddling together, nervously loquacious, at the edge of an
Lbyss" (PC 272).
Burke’s first fully developed application of the
dramatic metaphor to human relations occurs in Attitudes !
I j
toward History, and it is to that text that I now turn. To |
i !
demonstrate more thoroughly the significance of the approach,
; j
outlined in Permanence and Change. I want to trace the '
development of one "perspective by incongruity"
I
I
|("bureaucratization of the imaginative") to illustrate the
i '
dynamics of Burke’s dialectical inquiry.
i ■
' i
I Attitudes toward History deals with "the characteristic
j
[responses of people in their forming and reforming of
I
; i
congregations" (ATH v). The first section discusses the two
!
jmost basic attitudes with which people gauge the historical
\ i
Isituation and adopt a role in relation to it: acceptance and
rejection. These "frames of acceptance" unite people
"attitudinally" (ATH vii). The second section, "The Curve
of History," charts the various ways people have framed the
world, Burke converts the various developmental stages
after the analogy of a five-act play: Act I, Evangelical;
Act II, Medieval Synthesis; Act III, Protestantism; Act IV,
i
jEarly Capitalism; Act V, Collectivism. The third section
considers "The General Nature of Ritual" and attempts to
show how routines become ritualized behavior, making it
189
(possible for us to characterize the general orientation of
the age. "[E]very historical period is unique as regards
]its particular set of circumstances," Burke writes, but "the
tenor of men’s policies for confronting such manifold
conditions has a synthesizing function" (ATH vii). The
final section, "Dictionary of Pivotal Terms," resembles j
^Counter-Statement * s "Lexicon Rhetoricae" in its rephrasing, j
1 !
recapitulation, and shading of the attitudes toward art and j
life presented earlier in the text. The processes of j
gauging the situation, the psychological and sociological j
patterns of organizing experience, are Burke’s subjects. :
The process of processes he isolates--the "synthesizing
I
function"— is the "bureaucratization of the imaginative."
i ,
This phrase is the crescendo to which Attitudes toward
----------------------------- I
r
History builds. I
As a perspective by incongruity, bureaucratization of j
the imaginative is "designed to name the vexing things that
happen when men try to translate some pure aim or vision
into terms of its corresponding material embodiment, thus
necessarily involving elements alien to the original,
’spiritual’ (’imaginative’) motive (ATH vii). The
relationship between the key terms is incongruous because by
rational criteria, or commonsense, "bureaucratization" and
"imaginative" belong to different categories.
"Bureaucratization" is the term describing the material
transformation of ideas, and "sounds as bungling as the
190
situation it would characterize" (ATH 225). "Imaginative"
refers to the multiple possibilities created by ideas, and
suggests "pliancy, liquidity, the vernal" (ATH 225). The
^bureaucrat izat ion of the imaginative, then, is "the
carrying-out of one possibility" (ATH 225), when multiple
possibilities are available. The formula works as follows:
An imaginative possibility (usually at the start I
Utopian) is bureaucratized when it is embodied in j
the realities of a social texture, in all the
complexity of language and habits, in the propertyj
relationships, the methods of government, j
production and distribution, and in the :
development of rituals that re-enforce the same ;
emphasis. (ATH 225) j
I
As we saw in "Revolutionary Symbolism in America," Burke
(applies the concept to critical exhortation (the aspect of !
i
the social texture central to his concerns); socialist
Critics had, he argues, over-emphasized the symbol "the
worker" by condemning those works that did not deal directlyi
| I
with the plight of the proletariat. The possibilities for 1
I i
broadening the influence of the socialist agenda had been
(bureaucratized to this one subject, and terms that called
(for reorientation, such as "people," were perceived as
jthreats to the party’s efforts to educate the masses. To
Icite another example, Burke calls science "the
bureaucratization of wisdom" (ATH 228), primarily because of
its penchant for perfecting a methodology of invention
rather than the invention itself. Such bureaucratization is
I
j"bad" only to the extent that it creates more difficult
191
problems than the ones it was originally intended to
resolve. (In Chapter 4, I will explore in some detail
Burke's analysis of Hitler’s MeAn_Ka»pf « • «... of
bureaucratization in the extreme. Burke foresaw that the
problems created by fascism, pursued to the moment of
•resolution, would devastate millions of people.)
I
Burke, as we know, is immensely concerned with a
methodology of invention himself, and we could say that to
this extent he bureaucratizes criticism. He admits as much
when he writes,
Our formula, "perspective by incongruity," is a
parallel "methodology of invention" in the purely
conceptual sphere. It bureaucratizes" the "mass
production" of perspectives. It "democratizes" a
resource once confined to a few of our most
"royal" thinkers. It makes perspectives cheap and:
easy. (ATH 228-29; Burke’s emphasis).
I
We should make the distinction here that Burke’s object is
not strictly the perfection of methodology itself. He wants1
|
to open methodology to critique, and to develop a system of
inquiry capable of critiquing its own productions.
"Perspective by incongruity" is self-destructive for the
purposes of re-birth and would counteract the "process of
dying" initiated by the bureaucratization of the imaginative
(ATH 225). There may be some deterioration in the quality
;of critical formulations, but the "deterioration that would
go with the democratization of planned incongruity should be
matched . . . by a corresponding improvement in the quality
of popular sophistication" (ATH 229). The method of
192
^invention would "liquidate belief in the absolute truth of
concepts by reminding us that mixed dead metaphors of
abstract thought are metaphors nonetheless" (ATH 229).
1
Burke knows that he is at a critical juncture here because
the process he describes is relativistic to the point of
confusion. He rejoins that the method
J should make one at home in the complexities of
; relativism, whereas one now tends to be bewildered
| by relativism. And relativism cannot be
j eliminated by the simple legislative decrees of
i secular prayer (as when one tries to exorcize
! (sic] it by verbally denying its presence). We
must erect new co-ordinates atop it, not beneath
it. (ATH 229)
To transcend the bewilderment of relativism requires an act I
! !
of greater consequence than can be had by simply legislating!
I
alternative or more comprehensive (or "correct") theories of
I !
behavior. It requires, for Burke, positioning one’s self ini
1 :
janother frame of interpretation, one that views relativism j
itself not as something evil but as a necessarily [
I i
reoccurring pattern of inevitable mistakes. ;
i
! Here we have the shaping attitude of Attitudes toward
i
History. and, perhaps, the attitude that distinguishes much
I
of Burke’s writing: the comic. The poetic or dramatic
imetaphor called for in Permanence and Change helps Burke
find a way out of the relativist’s dilemma, not by refuting !
it with a theory more grand in scope, but by substituting
its attitude of resignation with a heightened sense of the
ironic aspect of human behavior and the necessity of
193
pragmatic skepticism. Burke’s choice of comedy as the
healthiest of the poetic metaphors is unequivocal:
The progress of humane enlightenment can go no
further than in picturing people not as vicious ,
but as mistaken. When you add that people are
necessarily mistaken, that all people are exposed
to situations in which they must act as fools,
that every insight contains its own special kind
of blindness, you complete the comic circle,
returning again to the lesson of humility that
underlies great tragedy. (ATH 41).
The comic frame views ambivalence as charitable--it is
neither "wholly euphemistic, nor wholly debunking" (ATH
166). Rather than being strictly "sour grapes," the comic
(frame should say "sour grapes plus" (ATH 337). The attitudej
I
is manifest in one s willingness to accept that acts can
dialectically contain conflicting motives— transcendental or|
material, imaginative or bureaucratic (ATH 167). Burke’s |
project is to divide and then re-merge the component parts
i |
of these dialectics. I
i
VI. Conclusion
During the 1930s we have in Burke a symbolic merger of
New Critical and Marxist methodology, and our division of
this dialectic now calls for some reunification--with a
difference. Counter-Statement juxtaposes New Critical
aesthetics with a socialist "program," and then merges the
two by exposing the connections between form and ideology.
The "Revolutionary Symbolism in America" speech shows Burke
willing to discuss social action as symbolic action, and to
jview revolutionary action as a rhetorical problem. New
Criticism and Marxism become cooperative enterprises.
Permanence and Change sets forth a method for interpreting
Interpretations— perspective by incongruity— arguing
poignantly for viewing the ideological struggles between
groups (individuals, critical factions, nations) as
I
cooperative acts of social revision. Attempts to dominate
and repress, from this perspective, become diseases of
i
cooperation. Attitudes toward History broadens the scope of
jthe Marxist-New Critical polarities by arguing for the |
psychological benefits of the comic attitude, reminding us
j i
all of the humane-ness of humility. As the 1930s close, j
Burke is neither New Critical nor Marxist— he has
| l
transcended the limitations of both categories by merging
I
(the perspectives enabled by each into a grander view of j
criticism as rhetoric, as an art of appeal the resources of
which enable both the invention of perspectives and a
perspective on perspectives.
| By 1940 the world is at war with fascism. In the
I
United States, New Criticism becomes the powerful critical
method. Burke has re-entered academic life, and begins a
long dialogue with the proponents of New Criticism. On j
other fronts, his pursuit of the ramifications of the
dramatistic metaphor lead him to an extended analysis of
'"The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ’Battle’" that is hauntingly
prophetic. Tinkering with notions of "The Constitutional
1 __
195
Wish" as a point of departure for developing further
rhetorical strategies and symbolic acts, Burke finds himself
turning to the monumental question, "What is involved when
we say what people are doing and why they are doing it?" (GM
xv). He designs his dramatistic pentad— act, scene, agent,
(agency, purpose— as a systematic set of terms "that clearly
I reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities necessarily
i
l arise" (GM xviii; Burke’s emphasis), and thereby continues
his pursuit of the resources of rhetoric. The decade comes
to a close with Burke’s second volume in his magnum opus, A
I I
' Rhetoric of Motives, a work that seeks to describe "the waysj
in which individuals are at odds with one another" (RM 22).6j
l
Rhetorical inquiry emerges as the means for ranging through
j
the complexities of cooperation and corruption, leading i
I
ideally to the transcendence of factionalization and strife.
196
Notes
1. Throughout the thirties and later, Burke used the
designation "formalist" rather than "New Critical." The
designations are roughly synonymous, with the exception that
"New Critical" is sometimes used pejoratively to name a
brand of criticism that is strictly textual, showing no
concern for the socio-historical sources of literary
production. (See, for instance, Gerald Graff’s retort to
Wellek in "New Criticism Once More.") Diseases of formalism
Isometimes led to such extreme positions, but in the hands ofj
ieritics such as Allen Tate, John Crowe Ransom, Cleanth
jBrooks, R.P. Blackmur, and others, formalist methods did not
supplant or exclude cultural criticism entirely.
2. One of the persistent points of contention between Burke
and his critics results from differences of opinion with
regard to Burke's use of syllogistic form, which is the I
standard form of academic argument. Burke relies heavily on1
qualitative progression even in his critical writing. |
I
3. From "An Interview with Kenneth Burke" by John Woodcock.
4. References to the discussion of Burke’s speech at the
Congress are drawn from Simon and Melia’s The Legacy of
Kenneth Burke. which reprints the challenges proffered by
Michael Gold, Friedrich Wolf, and Joseph Freeman. Page
jnumbers refer to this text henceforth.
5. Burke makes this point again in Attitudes toward
History. 173.
6. The third volume in Burke’s magnum opus, originally
conceived as A Symbolic of Motives, has yet to be published.
In A Rhetoric of Motives Burke envisions such a work as the
"rounding out" of his work on human relations. Whereas A
Grammar of Motives contemplates the paradoxes common to all
people and A Rhetoric of Motives considers strategies of
"identification," A Symbolic of Motives !
should be at peace, in that the individual
substances, or entities, or constituted acts are
there considered in their uniqueness, hence
outside the realm of conflict. For individual
universes, as such, do not compete. Each merely
is, being its own self-sufficient realm of
discourse. And the Symbolic thus considers each
thing as a set of interrelated terms all
conspiring to round out their identity as
197
participants in a common substance of meaning. (RM
22-3 )
Burke’s Language as Symbolic Action, though more a
[collection of diverse works than the completion of the
Motives trilogy, moves in the direction sketched in 1950,
Iparticularly in essays like "Terministic Screens" and "What
Are the Signs of What? (A Theory of "Entitlement").
I
Kenneth Burke and American Criticism in the 1940s
Are things disunited in "body"? Then unite them
in "spirit." Would a nation extend its physical
dominion? Let it talk of spreading its "ideals." :
Do you encounter contradictions" Call them
"balances." Is an organization in disarray"?
Talk of its common purpose. Are there struggles
over means? Celebrate agreement on ends.
Sanction the troublously manifest, the incarnate, j
in terms of the ideally, perfectly invisible and |
intangible, the divine.
— Burke, 19501 j
i Rhetoric (as the use of persuasive resources, rhetorical
I i
l utens) is the principal means for either initiating, 1
'continuing, or settling disputes. One of its more popular
forms is the polemic, which is the effort to settle
arguments by surmounting (through either verbally peaceful
or violent means) the differences of orientation implicit in
opposing viewpoints, an act of transformation involving
negation and re-synthesis. Polemic derives from the Greek
polemikos. meaning "war," and the Latin polemicus. meaning
"a controversialist." Its frequent use as a method in
critical circles rests on the premise that aggressive
199
"cooperation" is valuable in resolving conflict, yet at the
same time polemic is necessarily "war-like." In the
epigraph above from his 1950 address to the Conference on
College Composition and Communication, Burke speaks with
arony on the strategy of containment implicit in polemical
rationalizations that suppress contradictions for the sake
of transcendence. Amid the many confusions of World War II,
critics frequently speak of common purpose. The
"troublously manifest"--the dispersion of approaches to
I
literary criticism during the 1930s is countered in the |
i i
1940s by a sustained and powerful effort to purify critical j
practice. j
From 1940 to 1949, battles rage on many fronts. j
I
Globally, Hitler’s invasion of Poland in 1939 began World
jWar II. His violent polemics of the 1930s had divided the
German people, making the Jews universal scapegoats. I
'Polemics in the United States likewise divide cultural
critics attempting to define the proper and necessary
response to Hitler. In literary circles, critics continue
to debate the merits of formalism, though by now the Marxist
challenge has subsided. The self-identifying practice of
I
|New Critics focuses more specifically on the weaknesses of
jthe historical and philological critical tradition. The
movement is dubbed "New Criticism" in 1941 by John Crowe
Ransom in The New Criticism.2 Burke, unusually sensitive to
the polemical nature of human cooperation, begins to range
200
even further from the aesthetic he shared with 1930s
t
formalists, choosing instead to "use all that is there to
use" (PLF 23) and to promote a concept of rhetoric as
identification, which he offers as a "speculative" cure for
overly competitive and divisive forms of cooperation. It is
through such a rhetoric of identification that we can wend
our way through the vagaries of human motives, "through the
Scramble, the Wrangle of the Market Place, the flurries and
•flare-ups of the Human Barnyard, the Give and Take, the
jwavering line of pressure and counterpressure, the
Logomachy, the onus of ownership, the Wars of Nerves, the
War" (RM 23). Burke transforms criticism into nothing less !
than the attempt to ameliorate all conflict. By
I
constructing complex resources for revealing where |
ambiguities arise and how such ambiguities may lead to wars ;
over words, Burke provides a model for postponing conflict
by circling it with a continuing dialectic. Initially, he
devotes his attention to the consequences of war-time
nationalism on public debate, echoing sentiments he had
expressed concerning de Gourmont’s monism at the outset of
World Warl. In essays like "The Rhetoric of Hitler’s
I
j’Battle’" and "Americanism," Burke reasserts the need for
jenfranchising pragmatism and democratic inquiry.
| I • The Critical Scenery. 1940-1950: Formulating Responses
to Hitler
Before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the American people
did not unanimously support the United States *s intervention
in the war in Europe. Hitler had invaded Poland in 1939,
which prompted Congress to revise the Neutrality Act to
allow arms shipments to Great Britain and France.
Isolationists, led by the American First Committee and their
leading spokesperson, Charles Lindbergh, charged Roosevelt
i
with making policies that made U.S. involvement in the war
(inevitable. The Committee to Defend America by Aiding the
Allies, led by the prominent newspaper editor William Allen ;
| i
^White, argued vigorously that Roosevelt had not moved j
quickly enough. In the spring of 1940 the Nazis invaded
I
jDenmark, Norway, Holland, and France.
Initially, the American war effort led to severe
restriction on the range of public discourse. Press
censorship was introduced. Father Coughlin’s popular Social
Justice was branded seditious. The Alien Registration Act
Jof 1940 prohibited membership in organizations deemed
subversive and the advocacy of teaching of the forcible
overthrow of government (Jones 499-500). Those critics
Ltrongly advocating participatory politics and democratized
debate, having already been shocked by Stalin’s apparent
sell-out to the Nazis in 1939, found open inquiry over
public policy sharply curtailed, which some, including
202
Dwight MacDonald, believed every bit as fascist at the Nazi
regime.
The debates in American journals like The New Republic |
and Partisan Review prior to the U.S. entry into the war
were not over fascism itself. Antifascist sentiments were
nearly universal among those writers who discussed
intervention. The debates focused instead on the role of
I
the writer in supporting nationalistic goals. On the one
land, writers like Van Wyck Brooks, Lewis Mumford, and
Archibald MacLeish openly supported intervention from the
I :
start. MacLeish blamed the lack of response by Americans on
[the anti-war sentiments and the moral relativism of writers
] j
such as, Dos Passos, Ford Maddox Ford, and Ernest Hemingway.
Others, such as Edmund Wilson and Dwight MacDonald, I
vehemently battled such attempts to turn literature into a
vehicle for advancing political causes, or as MacDonald put
it, "bourgeois ideology" (367). The point of contention was
i
jwhether writers and critics ought to help establish a
unified, patriotic front for the sake of rallying the public
support necessary for ensuring a focused and powerful
response to Nazism.
In June, 1940, MacLeish delivered his speech, "Post-war
Writers and Pre-war Readers," to the American Association
for Adult Education in New York City, creating a furor in
the nation's newspapers and literary journals. As MacLeish
saw it, the young generation had learned to distrust not
only all slogans and all tags, but even "all words," all
|"statements of principle and conviction, all declarations ofj
I
moral purpose" (789). The problem with such cynicism was
jthat the only weapon with which fascism could be fought--
(i.e., "the moral conviction that fascism is evil and that a
jfree society of free men is worth fighting for" (789)--was
nowhere to be wielded. The responsibility for this state of
mind in the young generation belonged to some of the best
writers of the day— to Dos Passos, Hemingway, and others--
because they had filled their books with "passionate
Lontempt for the statements of conviction, of purpose and of|
| I
belief on which the war of 1914-1918 was fought" (789).
I !
yfacLeish concluded that such attitudes led to the belief i
that not just war issues, "but all issues, all moral issues,
were false--were fraudulent— were intended to deceive"
(790). And the problem cut even deeper to the young
jgeneration’s attitude toward language: "To suspect not only
Jthe tags, not only the slogans, but ’even all words’ is to
stand disarmed and helpless before an aggressor whose
i
strength consists precisely in destroying respect for the
law, respect for morality and respect for the Word" (790).
The very liberty of all Americans was at stake. As MacLeish
saw it, Hitler had helped pervert respect for words by using
them as ideological weapons, a strategy that perverted
!
morality. Common morality was not "ideological" but the
"universal" sense of right and wrong. Nazism was
204 J
essentially amoral and unlawful; it destroyed the morally
unifying capacity of language and thereby extinguished all
lope of drawing upon the fundamentally good qualities of
juman nature. American writers had unwittingly supported
this attitude by encouraging readers to distrust the
unifying powers of words.
MacLeish*s quasi-mystical use of the capitalized "Word"
to signify, loosely, "democratic ideals" came under bitter
reproach by, among others, Dwight MacDonald, an editor of
and frequent contributor to the leftist Partisan Review. In
his 1941 essay, "The Crisis of the Word," MacDonald agreed i
1 ' I
jthat Americans had learned to distrust nationalistic pleas, I
but placed the blame not on writers but on the failure of |
j I
bourgeois democracy, which had "broken down so completely as
a social and economic system that increasingly large
sections of the population have lost all faith in it. They j
gust don’t believe the words any more" (367). His |
i
sentiments echo the critique of capitalist hegemony by the
'Marxists of the early 1930s. Critics like Cowley, Hicks,
Burke, and others had argued that the prosperity of the late
1920s and the utopian rhetoric of Hoover and the Republican
Party had encouraged the runaway speculation leading to the
Depression. As MacDonald sees it, the writers of the 1930s
that MacLeish blames had expressed the general feeling of
betrayal among the populace. The words of the politician
had lost their persuasive force. This feeling was
I 205
i
widespread, finding its expression in films like Frank
Capra’s 1939, "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," which had
portrayed American politics as the machine of big business.
The ideals, aims, and meaning of America’s nationalistic
declarations could no longer be trusted.
Yet MacDonald’s argument against MacLeish does more
I
than dispute the effectiveness of nationalistic appeals. On
a more general level, the argument was over the proper
| i
orientation to language itself. As MacDonald sees it,
tfacLeish mistakenly conceives of The Word "much as Hitler
j
does, as a sort of medicine man's charm which can of itself.j
regardless of its relationship to reality, sway men to j
action" (367). In MacDonald’s contrary view, Hitler, |
far from destroying respect for The Word, has
exploited it more successfully than any demagogue
! in history. What MacLeish is really complaining
about is that Hitler’s Word has shown itself so i
much more potent than his Word as to destroy :
"respect" for the latter. Hitler has won the
youth of Germany, as is well known, by persuading
them that fascism offers them what they want from
life, that it is worth fighting and dying for.
(If respect for The Word is the mark of a healthy
society, as MacLeish implies, then Nazi Germany is
the high point of civilization.) This is a lie,
but it is believed. (367)
Americans, MacDonald argued, had learned that reality
"itself" had more suasory power than language. Germans,
however, had learned to respect (or submit) too easily to
the power of words and thereby been victimized by Hitler's
bombastic rhetoric.
The differences between MacDonald and MacLeish over the
j~ 206
central social crisis of their time stem from radically
different conceptions of the relationship between language
and reality, between art and propaganda. The differences
are akin to those that distinguished Marxists from New
Critics during the 1930s, and as Aaron points out, "literary
nationalists" from "literary formalists" ("Literary Scenes"
756). MacDonald’s view is that the writer’s responsibility
■is to represent as accurately as possible the cultural and
economic conditions of society. The critic will assess
works on the basis of whether they effectively lead readers j
to perceive these conditions. Writers do not transform
social content— they represent it. To represent it falsely
for the sake of promoting bourgeois ideology is to use |
I I
language unethically and to exploit the formal devices of j
language to produce effects for their own sake or for the
sake of distorting reality. Popular semanticists, such as
S.I. Hayakawa, supported such a view vigorously. Hayakawa
argues in Language in Action (1939) that it has been
customary to attribute our problems to "reality" and not to
the language we use to represent it. The average citizen,
the "Mr. Smith," Hayakawa argues, would rarely think of
investigating, among other things, "the nature and
constituents of that daily verbal Niagara as a possible
cause of trouble" (viii). Yet many of our difficulties in
life arise precisely because language may be a more powerful
influence on us than reality. Hayakawa describes "Mr.
207)
l
Smith’s" relation to language thus: }
Words and the way he takes them determine his !
beliefs, his prejudices, his ideals, his
aspiration— they constitute the moral and
intellectual atmosphere in which he lives, in
short, his semantic environment. If he is
constantly absorbing false and lying words, or if
, his unconscious assumptions about language happen
to be, as most of our motives are that have not
been exposed to scientific influence, naive,
superstitious, or primitive, he may be constantly
breathing a poisoned air without knowing it (xii).
t i
Though Hayakawa is not explicit, as MacDonald is, about who
jor what is responsible for "poisoning the air," he shares J
| :
MacDonald’s view that the Word has been a corrupting j
•influence. 1
MacLeish also recognizes the power of formal J
representation, but argues that words may positively unite
people in ways that social events by themselves cannot. The!
i !
i 1
Word may serve as the agency of morality and universal law.
MacLeish shows less interest than MacDonald or Hayakawa in ' ■
exposing the potentially "false" and "lying" potential of
language. MacLeish believes that language, when dignified
jby respect, will communicate the "ideal" and the "good,"
which are ideological abstractions best communicated by art;
modern writers, in emphasizing only the negative aspects of
World War I, had failed to adequately represent the positive
ideals— the "life-affirming" aim of literature (Aaron 756)—
•necessary for combating the tyranny of fascism. MacLeish
jcontends that such ideals were present and real among the
general populace during World War I, and the writer— putting
208
his or her responsibility as a citizen above his or her
responsibility as artist— ought to present a unified account
of the situation, including its patriotic element.
I
i
MacDonald, on the contrary, would trust the populace to
determine its own actions after being exposed to the correct
social observations of proletarian writers.
In his essay, "The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ’Battle*"
Ifirst published in 1939 in The Southern Review but later
collected in The Philosophy of Literary Form in 1941), Burke
arings a rhetorical perspective to this issue and helps
expose the explanatory (and dangerous) limitations of both
MacDonald’s and MacLeish*s conceptions of language.3 The
Jessay does not raise the issue of intervention directly;
rather it considers both Hitler’s manipulation of what
MacLeish calls "The Word" and reformulation of what
MacDonald calls "reality itself." The result is a
(penetrating look at the relations between art and
propaganda, and an eloquent argument for sensitizing one’s
self to language’s power to corrupt our natural inclinations
to cooperate and identify with each other.
In his opening paragraph, Burke adopts an attitude that
|
•many critics have found troubling; he revives the argument
he made in Counter-Statement that literature— criticism’s
subject--can and ought to be viewed simply as written or
spoken words (CS 123)— particularly when such words have
social impact. The premise, stated later in The Philosophy
209]
of Literary Form, is that "the analysis of aesthetic
t
l
phenomena can be extended or projected into the analysis of
!
I
social and political phenomena in general" (PLF 309). Mein
Kamnf. Burke argues, has been greeted with too many
'vandalistic comments" (PLF 191) made by critics who would
dismiss such a work as not being the proper subject of
jLiterary Such crlticS contribute W e to our
gratification than to our enlightenment" (PLF 191). As
Burke sees it, Mein Kamof is "the testament of a man who
I
swung a great people into his wake" and as such we should
| i
watch it carefully to "discover what kind of ’medicine’ thiS|
medicine-man has concocted, that we may know with greater |
accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to
forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America"
I
j I
(PLF 191). In choosing to view Mein Kampf as "effective" ,
I
writing, Burke faces the wrath of such critics as Helmut
Kuhn, who notes in his review of The Philosophy of Literary !
■Form that "there is nothing in [Burke’s] book in the way of
jreasoned convictions which entitles him to draw the
division-line between good and bad" (CRKB 140). Burke is
ever-ready to discuss less-than-great "art" for the sake of
elucidating not only the resources of rhetorical appeal, but
for putting people on their guard against the attitudes such
'appeals can create. In his view, the critic’s role is not
so much to establish artistic standards as it is to consider
symbolic action from a plurality of perspectives.
j The important thing to note about Mein Kampf is not its
quality as literature but its effective manipulation of
literary appeals. And learning to recognize appeals of its
sort is of the utmost importance. American virtues and
I
democratic ideals alone can not stave off the appeals of
Nazism, Burke contends. It is, rather, through the
' ' conflicts among our vices" that we resist the magical
appeals of fascist rhetoric (PLF 192). To battle the
"sinister unifying" of Nazism, he argues, requires the kind
of organized distrust of centralized power characteristic of
the democratic attitude. As he puts it, "Our vices cannot
get together in a grand united front of prejudices; and the
result of this frustration, if or until they succeed in
surmounting it, speaks, as the Bible might say, ’in the name
of’ democracy" (PLF 192). Burke wants to expose the ways in
which Hitler verbally transforms vices into virtues through
a form of linguistic alchemy whose processes we had better
be familiar with if we hope to avoid their spell.
Burke’s argument here recalls one he had made in
Counter-Statement concerning the nature of eloquence, one
which bears looking at more closely because it reveals the
ways in which his concept of eloquence in "The Rhetoric of
Hitler’s ’Battle’" acquires a moral dimension that
•previously had been unexpressed. In Counter-Statement.
eloquence was a "profusion" of stylistic and symbolic
charges. For Burke in 1931, "the artist whose eloquence is
211
an eloquence of profusion, will base his inclusions and
exclusions not on traditional definitions of the
I
I
ceremonious, but upon those aspects of an ideology which can
be associated with the ceremonious in his environment" (CS
170). The eloquent artist utilizes prevailing social
|
conditions to transform the "traditionally charged" into the
i |
j"contemporaneously charged" (CJ3 170). Burke does not
I
I
'attempt in Counter-Statement to formulate criteria for
i j
distinguishing "good" eloquence from "bad." But in his
! j
analysis of Hitler’s rhetoric, Burke suggests that !
| I
converting the "ceremonious in the environment" into j
ideological weaponry is not the proper function of
i
| i
| i
eloquence. Hitler’s eloquence is spellbinding because he ;
'"ceremoniously" displays a profusion of negative symbols thej
jfocus of which is Jewish evil. Hitler evades the ethical ;
and moral questions of such a racial discrimination by first
I i
^depicting all the economic problems of German society, then
by attributing their causes, ambiguously and categorically,
to Jewish nature. He constructs an ideology that becomes, |
I
through repetition, the "contemporaneously charged"— and j
jthus, the material of maladjusted eloquence. As Burke sees
jit, the concoctions of Nazi magic should not be dismissed
jsolely because they either corrupt moral and universal law
jor have been spoken by a madman. To resist the unifying
‘ appeal of the scapegoat mechanism we need to be aware of its
nature as an appeal and of its tendency to steer the
212
attention away from intrinsic (economic, political,
j
cultural) causes and toward racial ones. Like MacLeish,
Burke would have us respect the unifying power of the Word,
not for the sake of submitting to its appeal, but for
resisting its normalizing tendency. The moral imperative
here is to recognize the propagandistic element of
eloquence.5
The central rhetorical move in Mein Kampf is Hitler’s
establishment of a unifying center that "would recruit its
followers from among many discordant and divergent bands" I
I
(PLF 192). Hitler decided not only to establish a
centralized hub of ideas, but also to locate them
geographically in Munich, which could then serve as a mecca
i
"to which all eyes could turn at the appointed hours of
prayer" (PLF 192). He utilized the symbol of the common
I
enemy, the Jews, to further unite his followers. Hitler’s
i
rationalization, quoted by Burke, went as follows:
It is part of the genius of a great leader to make
adversaries of different fields appear as always
belonging to one category only, because to weak
and unstable characters the knowledge that there
are various enemies will lead only too easily to
incipient doubts as to their own cause. (PLF 193)
Such a technique directly opposes Burke’s belief that
healthy argument multiplies perspectives. Hitler’s
rhetorical move is to prohibit the distinctions that might
arise were people to believe that the causes of their ills
resulted from multiple sources. Hitler himself distrusted
the "parliamentary," which at its best, Burke says, is a
I
"babel" of voices: "There is the wrangle of men representing
interests lying awkwardly on the bias across one another,
sometimes opposing, sometimes vaguely divergent" (PLF 200).
iitler’s strategy was to reduce parliamentary babel to one
i/oice identifying all the evils of poverty, prostitution,
immorality, coalitions, incest, half-measures, democracy,
iieath, internationalism, seduction,, etc., as the inevitable
|
result of Jewish corruption. Such a strategy appealed to
t i
Hitler’s followers because it simplified their interpretive
| i
■framework, helping them trace all their troubles to one !
j f
source, to one unifying symbol, making piety "cheap and j
I « I
easy. 1
Hitler’s unification device, says Burke, had four otherj
I I
important features. First, it stressed the "inborn dignity";
of the German people at a time when the emotionally
i
deracinating effects of World War I were still strong.
Second, it also relieved frustration by allowing his
followers to project their ills onto a vessel or cause
outside the self, so that "one can battle an external enemy
instead of battling an enemy within" (PLF 203). Third, the
unifying device provided followers with a "positive" view of
life, having provided them with a feeling of symbolic
rebirth, the feeling of moving forward toward a goal (PLF
203). Finally, it helped Hitler deflect attention from
economic problems by "providing a noneconomic interpretation
214
of economic ills" (PLF 204).
Burke’s analysis of Hitler’s methods is not confined to
the rhetorical appeals of orientation and unity. He also
kescribes Hitler’s efforts to establish rapport with his
followers by promoting their identification with his role as
prophet. To consider this aspect of Hitler’s rhetoric,
I
Burke enlists Freud’s concept of "persecution." Freud had
argued in Totem and Taboo that "[Wjhen a paranoiac names a
person of his acquaintance as his ’persecutor,’ he thereby
elevates him to the paternal succession and brings him underi
conditions which enable him to make him responsible for all
jthe misfortune which he experiences" (qtd. in Burke PLF
214). Hitler defined all efforts by his contemporaries to i
criticize his political platforms as "interference" with hisj
I I
efforts to reform. He would purposely provoke dissent by
I '
making provocative remarks in his speeches, then would have i
i i
I
his storm troopers brutalize those who challenged him. j
^Transformed into the role of the persecuted, he could vote !
•himself a new identity; the wrangles of parliamentary debate
become the old identity— the "bad" father, the persecutor—
and he became the leader who stood steadfastly against such
corruption (PLF 217),
Burke closes his discussion of Hitler’s battle by
reminding us that our desire for unity is "genuine and
admirable" (PLF 219). But this unity, "if attained on a
deceptive basis, by emotional trickeries that shift our
215
criticism from the accurate locus of our trouble, is no
I
unity at all” (PLF 220). By heaping all of the German ills
on the backs of the Jews, Hitler deflected attention from
i ’
the economic factors involved in modern conflict (PLF 204).
To Burke, this act is not the result of a fictitious "devil-
9 4
function” (PLF 219). It is a symbolic act of transformation!
| !
!that cannot be attributed to the evil natures of the German j
people. Instead, Hitler appeals by "relying upon a '
bastardization of fundamentally religious patterns of
| :
|thought" (PLF 219). The lesson we are to learn here is that
we must distrust the "industrial or financial monopolist"
'who may, "annoyed by the contrary voices of our parliament, i
wish for the momentary peace of one voice, amplified by
,social organizations, with all the others not merely ;
[quieted, but given the quietus" (PLF 220). To detect such 1
diseases of cooperation we need to recognize the power of !
i
(the scapegoat mechanism as a rhetorical appeal. And to
i
counteract our tendency to opt for unity when diversity j
I
might better serve our needs, we must consistently undermine
the power of hegemony by fighting for the right to wrangle.
Burke’s analysis of Mein Kampf is formalist to the !
extent that it focuses upon Hitler's efforts to weave all
the elements of his argument into a unified castigation of
Jews. And it demonstrates the formalist's concern for
explaining the effects of the author’s imaginative (or as
jBurke puts it, "nauseating" (PLF 191)) reconstruction of
216
culture. (In this aspect of his analysis, Burke would seem
to be at odds with Dwight MacDonald, who had attacked
MacLeish for believing that words by charm alone can sway
people to action. As Burke sees it, Hitler’s medicine is
I
effective in spite of its distortion of reality; and to
believe that reality itself--or logos— is the only resource
of persuasion is to ignore, with potentially dangerous
I
jconsequences, the appeal of form.) Burke combines this
^formalist analysis with a Marxist critique of Hitler’s J
efforts to strangle the urge to place the blame for
'society’s ills on economics. From the Marxist perspective,
jthe propagandistic aspect of Mein Kampf results precisely i
from Hitler’s repression of an economic interpretation and
promotion of an alternative, one based on a hierarchy of i
I |
race. Whereas Marxism would find the source of corruption ,
I
in social conditions, Freudianism would look to the |
f
psychological problems causing Hitler’s maladjusted appeal.6
Burke thus draws on Freudian psychology to explain how
Hitler’s persecutional mania persuades further
identification with his cause. From this perspective, Mein
Kampf is Hitler’s attempt to conquer the sexual and oedipal
drives within himself; his spell is effective because he
liberates, for good or ill, similar urges repressed by his
followers. Burke ranges through these alternative
perspectives like a parliamentarian bent on exposing the
dynamics of Hitler’s rhetoric and the multiple causes of its
217
appeal. His demonstration of the value of such multi-voiced
analysis directly contrasts with the demogoguery of Hitler’s
efforts to prohibit alternative explanations and to
discourage doubt. In America, we can learn to question
nationalistic fervor by challenging the power of the Word.
I
Such an attitude would clearly show, as MacDonald observed,
more respect for the power of language than does blindly
submitting to its appeals without reservations.
Burke’s purpose in taking Mein Kampf "seriously” is for!
the sake of helping us guard against fascist rhetoric in the!
j I
United States. In "Americanism: Patriotism in General, ’
I I
Americanism in Particular, Interspersed with Pauses" (1941),;
i I
he focuses more precisely on the concoctions of fascist
| i
jthinking in America and the challenges they pose for j
I I
/'humanistic" democracy. Burke identifies the "perfect I
i
patriot" as the Nazi or Fascist totalitarian "citizen"—
jthose "sincere participants in this fabulous conditioning, '
jthe naive who are all primed for ’sacrifice.’ Such figures
jare the ultimate, the absolute completion, of nationalist |
i 4
I I
attitudes" (2). The warning implicit here is that Americans!
*
i
who sacrifice "all" for the war-effort may be duped. One
must recognize when the pious devotion to cause leads to
Jspiritual blindness. When a nation becomes the
1
["totalitarian substitute for God" (3), we lose sight of the
democratic ideal, which would view patriotism as but a part
of a "dialectic series— an integral and necessary part, but
218
not the one source of reference, or even the major source of
reference, for all moral values and commands" (2). Burke
asks for a full consideration of the many identities that
Lily us with our friends as well as our enemies.
Specifically, the tendency to identify Americanism as "big
business" (or "busyness") helped leaders and spokesmen (the
j'priesthood") generate policies that lead "them and us into
jthe World War [World War I], into the crisis of 1929, into
acquiescence, and even assistance in the rise of Mussolini
|
and Hitler" (3). This blunting of social terminology
creates but one identification on what should be a "whole
sliding scale of interests" (2). The key to avoiding such
j f actionalizat ion is to enlist terminologies capable of
elaborating the tangled web of motives— business, fascist,
Lemocratic, patriotic, or otherwise. A Grammar of Motives
and A Rhetoric of Motives, as we will see, are sustained
attempts to conceptualize the scope of such a terminology.
'II• The Domestic Crisis in Criticism: Burke and the New
i ---■ ——■
Critics
As Americans gradually then wholeheartedly rallied
around the war effort with patriotic zeal, critics kept busy
jby teaching. During the 1940s, many retreated from the
public arena to the university, sobered, perhaps, by the
I
volatility of the world crisis. Critics showed they no
longer harbored the reservations toward academic scholarship
219
prominent in the 1920s and then softened in the 1930s in the
i
midst of socioeconomic crises. By 1940, American criticism
had begun to reconsolidate itself, "declaring its new
I
^business, refining its product, and securing its boundaries"
(Cain "Crisis" 100). The critical debate between formalism
and Marxism during the 1930s gave way to new questions '
concerning the identity of criticism as a discipline. As J
Cain reports, during the 1940s,
The study of literature occurs within
"departments" of the colleges and universities;
literary study means focusing on the "artistic
objects" themselves; and critics and teachers must
be mindful of the specifically 1iterary terms of j
their work, terms that make clear the difference '
between this work and that which takes place in ,
i other departments. ("Crisis" 100) j
(The consequences of "disciplinariness" dramatically shaped
the methodology of critics, and for Burke, someone
j _ j
preeminently concerned with strategies of representation, j
this new scene-agency ratio led to new battles over the
range and scope of critical inquiry. |
Formalist aesthetics officially acquire the title "New
Criticism" with the publication of John Crowe Ransom’s The
i New Criticism in 1941, but at that time, he "apparently j
meant no more than to designate the criticism then current" j
(Brooks "New Criticism" 567). The theoretical
'pronouncements of New Critics, however, gradually became
j
jdistinct enough to determine the movement’s epistemology and!
220
establish it as a unique field of study. Rene Wellek sums
up the basic starting point:
The New Criticism surely argues from a sound
premise, that no coherent body of knowledge can be
established unless it defines its object, which to
the New Critic will be the individual work of art
clearly set off from its antecedents in the mind
of the author or in the social situation, as well
as from its effect in society. ("The New
Criticism: Pro and Contra" 620)
As an applied science, New Criticism needed not only a
I
I
"coherent" object, but it needed as well a body of
principles it could apply systematically. One of the
I
■fundamental premises for formulating such principles arises j
| i
■from the concern Wellek raises; namely, New Criticism neededj
some method for distinguishing literary study from j
sociology, history, political science, psychology, and (
j I
anthropology— essentially, from all the other disciplines |
comprising the university. j
The New Critical methods helped institutionalize j
jcriticism as the study of literary texts. The excesses of
(previous critical movements--the moral and ethical
I
pronouncements of New Humanism, the excessive historicizing
jof Marxism, the perceived threat of positivism, etc.—
irequired distinct counter-measures if literary study was to
^establish itself as a justifiable academic discipline. The
I
argument, paraphrased from I.A. Richards by Cleanth Brooks,
was that before one could understand the interrelations
between literature and other human activities, one needed to
I 221
purify literary criticism into a theory that would
I
consistently lead to replicable results ("The New Criticism"
I
568). As W. Ross Winterowd points out, such "theories of
’pure’ literature developed in response to positivism and
triumphant science, but also as a result of their own
■internal logic" ("The Purification of Literature and
Rhetoric" 257). That is, in their attempts to purify
'literary studies, New Critics also found themselves
purifying literature into structural analysis, since poetic j
^structure appears to be one of the qualities literature |
I
possesses uniquely and permanently (Brooks 568). New
Critics (e.g., William Empson) also applied semantics to j
literary study for the sake of demonstrating the complexity !
jof literary structure. They also sought to develop terms j
i |
like irony, plurisignation, ambiguity, etc., to indicate the!
I
jrichness and complication of meanings developed in a poetic
I
jcontext (Brooks 568). All of these practices are motivated
by the "profound distrust of the old dualism of form and
jcontent, and a real sense of the failure of an ornamentalist
i
rhetoric to do justice to the interpenetration of the form
and matter achieved in a really well-written work" (Brooks
568). (The Impressionists, it was felt, had over-privileged'
form; the Humanists and Marxists, content.) Though New
Criticism ostensibly slighted attempts to discuss literature
as the psychological, social, or political strategies of
artists attempting to respond imaginatively to historical
222
situations,7 it nevertheless adequately demonstrated the
complexity of the artist’s verbal and imaginative resources.
Another factor contributing to the institutionalization
of New Criticism was its teachability. Neither teachers nor
i t
his or her students had to spend long hours studying history
and biographical materials (the primary activities of
historical and philological criticism)— an act that in the
past had "prepared" one to read. The New Criticism was j
pedagogically more viable than either Impressionism or
I
Marxism because it encouraged teachers and students to read
and respond to poems directly. They could share perceptionsj
of texts in a process that, with the teacher’s trained |
sensibility as guide, enabled students to become more j
sophisticated readers. Such a pedagogy is not without its
consequences, as Burke himself points out in A Rhetoric of
ytotives. To him, the New Critical
cult of patient textual analysis . . . is helpful
as a reaction against the excesses of extreme
historicism (a leftover of the nineteenth century)
whereby a work became so subordinated to its
background that the student’s appreciation of
first-rate texts was lost behind his involvement
with the collateral documents of fifth-rate
literary historians. (RM 28)
“ Furthermore, the autonomy of fields is valuable
methodologically because it gives clear insight into a
.particular set of principles, a way of thinking particularly
[needed when "pseudoscientific thinking has become
’unprincipled’ in its uncritical cult of ’facts’" (RM 28).
jln other words, scientific inquiry had begun to hunt facts
;for their own sake, regardless of any principle other than
ithe formula— "information equals knowledge." Burke is quick
to point out that there were dangers involved in stressing
the pure autonomy of critical methodology. Just because "an
{activity is capable of reduction to intrinsic, autonomous
principles does not argue that it is free from
i
■identification with other orders of motivation extrinsic to
at" (RM 27). In stressing the disciplinary autonomy of its
principles, the New Criticism enrolled the student
"stylistically under the banner of a privileged class,
serving as a kind of social insignia promising preferment"
(RM 28). For Burke, it is no great insight to recognize j
that colleges confer status; but it is a grave oversight to
persist in believing that one’s methodology can be wholly |
Jseparate from the cultural context. Burke, at least in j
1950, had not yet accused New Critics of defending such a
jclaim. He simply had reservations of his own concerning the
limitations of autonomous critical practice.
Burke’s associations with the New Critics go
considerably beyond his partial endorsement of their
i
pedagogical mission. Despite having some radically
divergent interests of his own, he certainly recognized the
I
value of autonomous, methodologically consistent principles.
[
Like all terministic screens, the New Critic’s specific
I
emphases enabled certain insights by directing the attention
in incisive ways. And it is clear that he frequently
discussed literature as a New Critic might. One of the
I
basic propositions of Burke’s The Philosophy of Literary
Form. for example, was that "A work is composed of implicit
L r explicit ’equations’ (assumptions of ’what equals what’),
in any work considered as one particular structure of terms,
or symbol system" (PLF viii), and the poem was the dramatic
working through of the tensions involved in such equations.
Cleanth Brooks, a leading New Critic, sounds remarkably
Burkean in his essay "The Heresy of Paraphrase" (1947).
jThere, Brooks argues for viewing symbolic action much as j
Burke does. As Brooks sees it, "the conclusion of the poem
is the working out of the various tensions— setup by
i
^whatever means— by propositions, metaphors, symbols. This
unity is achieved by a dramatic process, not a logical; it
represents an equilibrium of forces" (189). New Critics
themselves wavered over whether Burke was really "one of
them." Brooks persistently claimed that Burke was, though
he did not like to admit it ("New Criticism" 567). Wellek,
on the contrary, could not decide what Burke’s field was.
In the same essay he identifies Burke as "primarily" a
I
philosopher, a rhetorician, a Marxist, a Freudian--none of
which, claims Wellek, makes him a literary critic (234). To
Vincent Leitch, Burke is a New Critic, but is an exemplary
case positioned both inside and outside the discipline (40).
225
Despite the apparent similarities in approach, Burke
and Brooks have distinct differences that, when examined
more closely, reveal major disagreements over the aims of
jcriticism, disagreements that lead to some heated debates
between Burke and the New Critics for many years to come.
I
One of the major differences results from Burke’s
willingness to deviate from structural interpretation and
from the syllogistic form of New Critical analyses. As a i
j f
representation and enactment of methodology, the critical
<
'essay conditions certain habits of responding to literature !
!
and to criticism itself. To use Keith Fort’s terms, its i
! I
jform, like all form in discourse, is both a strategy for j
^establishing a relation to reality and the expression of an j
jattitude or a set of expectations (173). As it prescribes aj
particular attitude toward literature, the critical essay j
structures experience in ways that reaffirm this prevailing j
belief. Literary criticism of this sort prohibits the kind
of critical freedom Burke associates with democracy, and a
close examination of how formal closure forecloses
alternative viewpoints helps us understand the importance
for Burke of sustained rhetorical invention.
Take, for instance, Burke’s "Symbolic Action in a Poem
by Keats" (1943) and Brooks’s "Keats’ Sylvan Historian"
(1947), both outstanding examples of the merits of each
critic’s approach. The specific "strategies of containment "j
in each essay reveal significant differences between Burke’s
226
and Brooks’s methodology. Brooks piques our curiosity in
the opening lines of his essay by referring to the "problem"
of Keats’s final lines in "Ode on a Grecian Urn": "’Beauty
Ls truth, truth beauty,’--that is all/ Ye know on earth, and
all ye need to know." To preserve the tone, style and form
of Brooks’s argument, I quote him at some length:
There is much in the poetry of Keats which
suggests that he would have approved of Archibald
MacLeish’s dictum, "A poem should not mean/ But
be.’ There is even some warrant for thinking that
the Grecian urn (real or imagined) which inspired
the famous ode was, for Keats, just such a poem,
"palpable and mute," a poem in stone. Hence it isj
the more remarkable that the "Ode" itself differs '
from Keats’s other odes by culminating in a j
statement— a statement even of some i
sententiousness in which the urn itself is made to|
say that beauty is truth, and— more sententious ,
still— that this bit of wisdom sums up the whole j
of mortal knowledge. (124)
I
Brooks uses the conditional mood in the opening sentence, j
postulating that Keats "would have approved" of the
jsubstantiality of a poem, its palpability. The second
sentence proceeds on another contingent note: there is "some
warrant" for believing that Keats would have viewed the urn
in the same way that MacLeish does a poem. The poem’s
structure is palpable and mute, hence capable of systematic
analysis and substantiation. The concluding sentences of
the paragraph end more boldly, asserting that despite
Keats’s hypothetical opinion, his ode ends with a statement
that apparently violates his own beliefs.
22 7
After discussing the critical quandary over Keats’s
closing lines, Brooks states his thesis: "the poem is to be
read in order to see whether the last lines of the poem are
j i
not, after all, dramatically prepared for" (126). Since the I
j
"poem is obviously intended to be a parable on the nature of
poetry, and of art in general" (125), emphasizing dramatic
!
unity is perfectly suited to the aims of the poem. Then, in
i
Jan aside, Brooks tells us that we need not study Keats’s ;
biographical data because only the dramatic context of the
lines can signify his poetic accomplishment. What Keats j
intended and what motivated these intentions can only cloud
the issue of whether or not the poem has unity. 1
j Brooks proceeds with a close structural analysis, or asj
he puts it, "attends closely to what Keats is doing here"
i
(132). He knows, however, that there are moments that belie;
i
such structural analysis. For instance, he says this of j
stanza IV: "Its magic of effect defies reduction to any
formula. Yet, without pretending to ’account’ for the
effect in any mechanical fashion, one can point to some of
the elements . . ." (131). This is a pivotal moment;
Brooks’s appreciation of the poem transcends the limitations
inherent in his method (the "effect defies reduction"), yet
he tries to account for the magical effects of the passage
anyway through a detailed analysis that masks his initial
tentativeness in the interest of preserving an authoritative
reading. In terms of the epigraph that begins this chapter,
228
Brooks "sanctions the troublously manifest, the incarnate,
in terms of the ideally, perfectly, invisible and
intangible, the divine." Preserving the form of his own
discourse by following through on the syllogism with which
le began becomes his paramount concern. Once Brooks
demonstrates the dramatic unity of the poem, he has re
validated it as the proper object of contemplation, and
reasserted the purity of his theory since it demonstrates
that the poem’s unity is palpable, mute, and replicable.
The stabilizing power of his method is an island of safety
in a sea of indeterminate meaning and structural gaps. '
Brooks’s strategy is to develop the argument that the ode, !
whatever else it may do or be being of secondary importance,!
I
satisfies the conditions he establishes at the outset, the
.perspective that a poem, to be good, must have dramatic
t
unity. Evidence that might ambiguate such a conclusion is
not introduced. The selection of a terminology and a set of
assumptions about what makes for good poetry necessarily
predetermines the range of questions Brooks asks.
Burke selects terminology in "Symbolic Action in a Poem
by Keats" that initially functions in much the same way as
Brooks’s. Burke opens the essay thus:
We are here set to analyze the "Ode on a Grecian
Urn" as a viaticum that leads, by a series of
transformations, into the oracle, "Beauty is
truth, truth beauty." We shall analyze the Ode
"dramatistically," in terms of symbolic action.
To consider language as a means of
information or knowledge is to consider it
__________ ep,istemqlogica 11 y_, semantically in terms of________
229
"science." To consider is as a mode of action is
to consider it in terms of "poetry." For a poem
is an act, the symbolic act of the poet who made
it--an act of such a nature that, in surviving as
a structure or object, it enables us as readers to
reenact it. (447)
jThe poem, Burke argues, awaits our reenactment. His aim is
jto demonstrate that the poem, through a series of internal
transformations, prepares us for the paradoxical ending.
Burke’s procedure at the start seems to be nearly identical
to Brooks’s. (Brooks himself points to this similarity in a
jfootnote.) Burke’s critical machinery, in this aspect of
his argument, derives mainly from principles first
■formulated in Counter-Statement. He wants to show that
I l
Keats’s ode creates formal expectations in the reader that j
'are gratified by his "series of transformations" and 1
resolved in the union of two previously disparate concepts
(beauty and truth). I
j Burke complicates this formalist perspective with J
i
jalternative systems for reenacting the symbolic action of I
the poem, and it is this divergence from his initial path
that distinguishes his analysis from Brooks's. The appeal
of form, Burke had argued in Counter-Statement. depends upon'
the ideology of the audience. Keats thus constructs a
'dialectic that divides romantic ideology into its two main
emphases: truth (science) and beauty (poetry), and through
formal development, collapses the dialectic in order to
promote a new synthesis. As Burke puts it,
230
Perhaps we might put it this way: If the oracle
were to have been uttered in the first stanza of
the poem rather than the last, its phrasing proper
to that place would have been: "Beauty is not
truth, truth not beauty." The five stanzas of
successive transformation were necessary for the
romantic philosophy of a romantic poet to
transcend itself (raising its romanticism to a new
order, or new dimension). An abolishing of
romanticism through romanticism! (447)
leats transforms romantic ideology to show that beauty can
and often does express truth. The poem abolishes the
metaphysic that Keats believed unjustly identified beauty as
the opposite of truth. The audience’s gratification, Burke
argues, depends not only upon the intrinsic, formal
development and re-synthesis of this dialectic, but also
| I
upon the satisfactory reunion of romanticism’s conflicting j
^epistemologies. Burke’s approach here is not narrowly |
Marxist, because he does not equate science and poetry with
existing class distinctions. Rather, he demonstrates how
!
1 |
Keats transforms ideology into a union of opposites in which,
neither truth nor beauty are mutually exclusive terms.
In the course of his exposition, Burke recognizes that
'his own analysis substantiates a critical ideology that
■makes him uncomfortable. In a characteristic revision of
generative principles, he halts his structural analysis to
explore possible "next moves." For instance, this passage
follows his discussion of the first two stanzas of Keats’s
poem:
Suppose that we had but this one poem by Keats,
and knew nothing of its author or its period, so
, __________ that. we_could_treat_i.t_only__in. .itself., as_a_se.ri.es
231
of internal transformations to be studied in their
development from a certain point, and without
reference to any motives outside the Ode. . . .
We might go on to make an infinity of observations
about the details of the stanza. . . .
Add, now, to our knowledge of the poem’s
place as an enactment in a particular cultural
scene, and we likewise note in this second stanza
a variant of the identification between death and
sexual love. . . . (450)
'Burke’s rationale for pursuing alternative possibilities is
jthis: "Our primary concern is to follow the transformations
i
of the poem itself. But to understand its full nature as a
symbolic act, we should use whatever knowledge is available"j
(451). Here he complicates the aim he established at the 1
start and opts for supplementing his analysis of poetic
action itself with a consideration of the ideological basis
of Keats’s truth/beauty dialectic. In a gesture of
defiance, Burke writes,
I grant that such speculations interfere with the
symmetry of criticism as a game. (Criticism as a
game is best to watch, I guess, when one confines
himself to the single unit, and reports on its
movements like a radio commentator broadcasting
the blow-by-blow description of a prizefight.)
But linguistic analysis has opened up new
possibilities in the correlating of producer and
product— and these concerns have such important
bearing upon matters of culture and conduct in
general that no sheer conventions or ideals of
criticism should be allowed to interfere with
their development. (451)
Brooks, recall, had specifically prohibited biographical
|inaterial with the argument that such information was
I
ancillary to his purpose of demonstrating the dramatic unity
of the poem. Burke rejects such critical conventions
232
because they restrain at moments when they should liberate
interpretations. The purpose of criticism is not to
demonstrate theses, but to use all there is to use. In the
end, Burke does demonstrate precisely what he set out to do,
namely, that Keats justifies his closing reversal: "The
transcendent scene is the level at which the earthly laws of
contradiction no longer prevail" (462). But along the way,
he has discussed a poem by Shelley, the love-death equation,
Keats’s illness, the "grounds of God’s creative act" (454),
Keats’s other poetry, and a poem by Yeats. In Burke’s
!
writing the critical laws of contradiction no longer [
prevail, and as with Keats’s Ode, we are asked to confront
the possibility that seemingly immutable restrictions on j
i
method be overturned for the sake of liberating our [
responses to poetry rather than, as we saw in Brooks,
i i
prohibiting observations we feel compelled to make. i
It is possible, of course, to view Burke’s method as
advocating critical anarchy, a view Rene Wellek argued for
vigorously in A History of Modern Criticism. 1750-1950.
Wellek’s objections can be summarized quickly. When Burke
J
makes excursions for the sake of developing alternative
explanations of Keats’s poem, for showing its place in the
textual and cultural space of nineteenth-century England, he
is, according to Wellek, performing "sleight of hand" (250).
The following passage reveals the fundamental disagreement:
Burke’s wide range of quotations from Shelley,
. __________ Shakespeare, Coleridge. Donne, Yeats, and the_____
233
references to Richard Wagner, D.H. Lawrence, Leo
Spitzer, and Ernst Kretschmer . . . should not
conceal the fact that they throw no light whatever
on the poem itself or on Burke’s argument about I
"an abolishing of romanticism through romanticism"
. . . or on the theological parallel about"God
[willing] the good because it is good . . . which
has no relevance to anything in the text. A poem
which both expresses envy for the eternity of art
and knows that this eternity is purchased at the
price of life and has the urn proclaim the old
Platonic identity of beauty and truth is
distorted, misread by Burke’s method, which
compounds arbitrary allegorizing with misconstrued
psychoanalysis and far-fetched Marxist
analogizing. (250, my emphasis)
Though Wellek’s closing two lines reveal a considerable biasj
f
'against alternative forms of criticism, I emphasized two |
earlier statements because they expose Wellek’s criteria. 1
The argument that Burke’s references to other poet’s and |
critics "throw no light whatever on the poem itself"
I
indicates Wellek’s refusal to accept that a poem’s j
significance can be anything other than what it is--a j
palpable and mute object that "should not mean/ But be."
,That "God" and "the good" have "no relevance to anything in
the text" is simply another expression of this doctrine.
The meaning of a literary object can only be considered
intra-textually. What to Brooks had been the metaphor of
i
the well-wrought urn and to Wimsatt, the verbal icon, to
Wellek becomes the literal artifact. The poem, not Keats,
"expresses" envy and "knows" eternity; likewise, the urn
"proclaims" Platonic philosophy. The poet and the critic
have been silenced.
234
Here we are at an impasse. In his response to Wellek*s
i
^charges of impropriety, Burke locates the difficulty in the
unfortunate extension of applied science to the point that
it becomes as intolerable of alternatives as religious
Logma:
I locate the basic "impasse" of our times in the
paradox whereby, though nothing is more rational
than applied science, the proper use of our
appliances calls for a policy of controls far more
comprehensive and oppressive than any system of
inquisitorial dictatorship has ever even remotely
approached in past history. And at the same time,j
these very necessities provoke quite the opposite [
tendencies, between sloth at one extreme and riot j
at the other. ("As I Was Saying" 26) |
I
To Burke, criticism is an assertion of one’s freedom as a |
i
"symbol-using animal" (LASA 3). Like life, it is a
pilgrimage, a battle, a war of nerves. Freedom, for WellekJ
is regulated by a doctrine of critical means. For Burke, in
choosing to identify an act critics face the "human freedom ,
and the human necessity" (GM 84): "This necessity is a
freedom insofar as the choice of circumference leads to an
adequate interpretation of motives; and it is an enslavement
insofar as the interpretation is inadequate" (GM 84). To
Burke, confining one’s attention to the "text itself" is an
oppressive doctrine that restricts interpretations for
disciplinary rather than humanitarian reasons. In his next
two books, A Grammar of Motives and A Rhetoric of Motives.
Burke moves away from his debates with New Critics over
methodology, his struggle becoming instead— as his epigraph
235
i
Jto A Grammar of Motives states, Ad bellum purificandum
(towards the purification of war)--a comprehensive effort to
explore the attributing of motives and to encourage
|
(tolerance by speculation.
I
1
jlll. Rhetorical and Dialectical Maneuvers in A Grammar of
Motives
May we be Thy delegates j
In parliament assembled.
Parts of Thy wholeness.
And in our conflicts i
Correcting one another. j
By study of our errors i
Gaining revelation.
I
— Burke, "Dialectician’s I
I
Prayer" ■
A Grammar of Motives extends Burke’s overall project to
I
develop a means of critiquing criticism and to ground these j
means in the representative anecdote of dramatism. The |
opening sentence of his introduction asks the question,
"What is involved when we say what people are doing and why
they are doing it?" (GM xv). A Grammar of Motives thus
explores the attributing of motives, not motives themselves,
but the statements people make when they discuss human
relations. The Grammar continues Burke’s effort to multiply
perspectives on linguistic behavior. Rhetoric, having been
in Counter-Statement primarily a method of formulating
stylistic appeals, here becomes more fully developed to
‘ include the invention of perspectives through dialectic and
236
the subsequent selection of the "perspective of
■perspectives" that grounds any verbal appeal in a
(philosophical system. Burke’s effort is to speculate as to
the conflicts implicit in and between philosophical systems 1
that would use as their point of departure a particular
Explanation of human motivation.
The basic "forms of thought" exemplified by the
attributing of motives "are equally present in
systematically elaborated metaphysical structures, in legal
judgments, in poetry and fiction, in political and
i
I
scientific works, in news and in bits of gossip offered at j
I
random" (GM xv). Burke’s interests once again lead him
beyond literary criticism proper; at the same time, however,
the implications to be drawn from this book bear directly !
upon the interpretive act. All living things are critics, !
I
he had argued in Permanence and Change. As such, a well- j
rounded account of critical strategies would not limit
itself to those strategies designed exclusively to explain
literature. Though applications may differ, the principles
of interpretation remain basic forms of thought.
Burke’s "objects" are "the necessary ’forms of talk
about experience’" (GM 317). In his appended and much-
discussed essay, "Four Master Tropes,"8 he explains how one
might go about discovering and describing "the truth" or
existence of these "necessary" forms:
it is by the approach through a variety of
I __________ perspectives that we establish a character’s______ [
237
reality. If we are in doubt as to what on object
is, for instance, we deliberately try to consider
it in as many different terms as its nature
permits: lifting, smelling, tasting, tapping,
holding in different lights, subjecting to
different pressures, dividing, matching,
j contrasting, etc. (GM 504)
This method of establishing the reality of one’s object may
be driven by specific principles. "By deliberate coaching
f and criticism of the perspective process," Burke argues,
"characters can be considered tentatively, in terms of other
characters, for experimental or heuristic purposes" (GM I
!
504). Human motivation, for instance may be considered in
terms of conditioned reflexes or chemicals (Behaviorism),
I
class struggles (Marxism), the love of God (Religion), j
neurosis (Freudianism), pilgrimage (Quest), power j
I ■
(Politics), movements of the planets (Astrology), geography
(Nationalism), and, Burke jokes, sun spots (504).
To pursue his interest in formulating perspectives on j
ithese perspectives, Burke uses the dramatistic pentad as the!
I
jgenerating principle of investigation. To make a rounded
statement about motives, we need terms that name the act
(what took place in thought or deed), scene (the background
of the act), agent (person or kind of person that performed
the act), agency (the means or instruments used), and
purpose (why the act was performed) (GM xv). The pentad
carries out Burke’s proposal, made in Permanence and Change,
that we need to extend our conceptions of the world of
discourse through the resources of the dramatic metaphor.
As he sees it, dramatism has the scope necessary for
discussing human affairs while possessing the simplicity
needed at moments when our explanations become too complex
and bewildering. The terms of the pentad thus enable us
I
"constantly to begin afresh" (GM xvi). The statements Burke
Leeks to describe would specifically utilize resources of
j i
the pentad and as such can be considered "philosophies."
i
Burke conceives of the five terms as principles, "and of the
I
various philosophies as casuistries which apply these i
I
principles to temporal situations" (GM xvi). Ideally, he
j
wants "not terms that avoid ambiguity, but terms that |
clearly reveal the strategic spots at which ambiguities
necessarily arise" (GM xviii). And fighting the impulse to j
Lingle out the ambiguities in philosophical systems for the ,
! i
'sake of strengthening one’s "alternative" philosophy, Burke |
would not "’dispose of’ any ambiguity by merely disclosing
the fact that it is an ambiguity, . . . [but] rather
consider it our task to study and clarify the resources of
ambiguity" (GM xix). The method is designed to create the
"alchemic opportunity" whereby we can return philosophical
systems to their common ground, then reconstruct them for
the sake of creating new distinctions. Dramatism, in this
sense, is the discursive process of identifying and then
elaborating ambiguity. Rhetoric enters the process as the
means of utilizing the resources of ambiguity to
239
substantiate a perspective and make it grounds for
^cooperative action.
To understand why Burke discusses ambiguity as a
resource of rhetoric and in what ways philosophical systems
can be rhetorical perspectives, we must first consider his
| |
■recovery of the term "substance." Substance, he points out,
is a term from the "Stance" family, meaning it derives from
! !
a concept of place or placement (GM 21). The paradox of |
I '
substance results from the fact that even though the term is.
'commonly used to designate what a thing is., it derives from !
i ;
a word designating something that a thing is not. "That is,I
I i
though used to designate something within the thing,
! ;
'intrinsic to it, the word etymologically refers to something;
i
outside the thing, extrinsic to it" (GM 23). The \
I i
unresolvable ambiguity of a term like "substance” leads to
i i
"antinomies of definition," meaning that attempts to define j
I
jwhat a thing is, requires defining what it is not. Someone
utilizing contextual definition, for instance, might discuss
people in terms of nature, and thus open themselves to
charges that they do not discuss people "in themselves" (GM
26). Familial definitions discuss a thing in terms of what
it "derives from" instead of the thing itself (GM 26-9).
Burke classes both these types of definition under the
i
general heading "dialectic substance" (GM 33). Dialectic
substance "derives its [ironic] character from the
systematic contemplation of the antinomies attendant upon
j 240
jthe fact that we necessarily define a thing in terms of
| t
something else" (GM 33). Burke’s point is this: Dramatism
jfalls under the heading dialectic substance because it
["treats of human motives in the terms of verbal action" (GM I
33). The terms of the pentad help locate the resources of
ambiguity because they point to moments when people
attribute motives by privileging a particular orientation.
I
To describe war as a "means to an end," for instance, is to
(foreground agency; applying the pentad, we immediately
j t
notice that war may also be considered a scene, particularlyj
■from a soldier’s perspective (GM xx). To privilege a
| I
particular orientation requires momentarily suppressing I
i
alternative bases for our descriptions and affirming their |
j I
"substantially" present aspects. Dramatism, Burke argues,
would have us systematically dwell upon the paradoxes of !
i ' !
'substance and can help us "equip ourselves to guard against
I i
jthe concealment of ’substantialist’ thought in schemes [or
philosophical systems] overtly designed to avoid it" (GM
57). In helping us locate the resources of ambiguity, the
pentad awakens us to "strategies of concealment," a phrase I
naming one of the traditional functions of rhetoric.
Illustrating how Burke employs the pentad to locate the
ambiguity in a philosophical system will help stabilize the
dynamics of dramatistic inquiry. Part Two of the Grammar
considers seven primary philosophic languages in terms of
the pentad, using it as a generating principle that "should
24 r
enable us to ’anticipate* these different idioms" (GM 127).
i
Each of the seven different schools features one term in the
i
J
pentad: Materialism features scene; Idealism features agent;
Pragmatism features agency; Mysticism features purpose;
Realism features act; Nominalism and Rationalism borrow
terms from the other five systems (GM 128). Idealism, for
i
example, asserts that apart from the activity of the self or
I
subject in sensory reaction, memory, association, etc., |
) !
there can be no world of objects (GM 171). Thinking in j
terms of "ego," the "self," and such "super-persons" as J
i !
/'church, race, nation" involves the featuring of the
! I
properties belonging to the term "agent" (GM 171). [
j By way of demonstrating the ambiguities of privileging j
j * agency,’ Burke points to the case of Marxism. He argues
that Marxism grows out of Idealism by antithesis. That is, j
I ;
'in Hegel, "The development of the spirit was viewed as j
objectified through the medium of nature and history" (GM
200). Marx reversed this situation by arguing that the
I
character of human consciousness in different historical ;
f
periods derived from prevailing material conditions (GM |
I
200). Normally, Marxism is viewed as materialist (with ■
I
l
emphasis on "scene"); but, Burke points out, in calling upon
'human agents and for "social unification," Marxism is highly
idealistic and utopian. While Marxism grounds itself in a
materialist interpretation of the world, it relies upon "the
(creative power of the idea to bring about the desired
242
improvements" (GM 208). Herein is the ambiguity Burke wants
to expose. And this ambiguity serves specific purposes in
the construction of Marxist rhetoric. He sums up:
The mingling of idealistic and materialistic
ingredients due to the fact that the materialist
dialectic was derived from a philosophy of
"Spirit" serves well the double purpose of
exhortation and polemic; for the idealistic
aspects assist party unification, and the
materialist aspects serve well as a critical
instrument for disclosing the special interests
that underlie bourgeois pretenses to disinterested
idealism, impartial justice, and similar universal
motives. (GM 209).
3y first equating Idealism with the featuring of the term
i I
agency, Burke is able to expose the paradox in a materialist I
philosophy that simultaneously seeks to gather followers in j
! „ !
the attempt to alter material conditions. The alchemic ;
moment" occurs when the rhetorical moves of such a movement '
!
repress this paradox by asserting strictly materialist
motives.
\
I
After pursuing similar paths in discussing the other
seven philosophical schools, Burke focuses upon the means
i
I
whereby a philosophical system, such as Marxism, can produce
transformations that transcend ambiguity for the sake of
higher synthesis--which is one function of dialectic and one
I
|of the primary resources of rhetoric. He tries to
i
i
demonstrate throughout the last two sections of the Grammar
|
jthat rhetoric is a common function in many systems. As he
puts it later in A Rhetoric of Motives, rhetoric is "an
Lssential function of language itself, a function that is
243
wholly realistic, and continually born anew: the use of
language as a symbolic means of inducing cooperation in
1
beings that by nature respond to symbols" (RM 43, Burke’s
jemphasis). To make this point in the Grammar. Burke turns
Jto dialectic.
I Dialectic means in the most general sense "the
i
employment of the possibilities of linguistic
I
transformation" or the "study of such possibilities" (GM
402). As he points out, dialectic has been defined in many j
I
ways, but for his purposes, the definition most pertinent |
I
jconsiders dialectic as
i
t
any development . . . got by the interplay of
various factors that mutually modify one another,
and may be thought of as voices in a dialogue or j
I roles in a play, with each voice or role in its
partiality contributing to the development of the 1
i whole. (GM 403) ;
j )
Burke concentrates on this aspect of dialectic because he
| i
wants to show how perspectives change in the course of their|
expression, allowing for rhetorical moves that appear to be j
' l
"neutral." Through a process of merger and division, i
dialectic proceeds toward a synthesis that would not have J
I t
jbeen possible otherwise: "When an act is performed [e.g.,
|
jthe act of dialectic] it entails new sufferances, which in
jturn entail new insights" (GM 67). A process of scattering
Jand assembling particulars and of converting ambiguities
into assets, the "merger-division" shift, "draws upon the
fact that any distinction is liable to a sharpening into a
244
contrast. and any contrast may be attenuated into the form
i
of a distinction" (GM 418). The process of division, for
instance, is a rhetorical move allowing someone to
"idealize" one cause while "materializing" the opponent’s
cause (GM 419). The aim is eventually to synthesize
distinctions into a controlling idea. Through a series of
t
I
jdialectical moves, a person enlists the sympathies of
potential followers on behalf of some transcendent idea.
To sum up: the process of dialectic proceeds as the
rational employment of principles governing the purposive
use of language. The instruments of the process fre the
(structures of terms, and "must be expected to manifest the
nature of terms" (GM 313). Explanations (in science,
|
{philosophy, history, etc.) do not reveal "reality" per se,
I J
but rather, "only such reality as is capable of being I
j j
revealed by this particular kind of terminology" (GM 313). 1
i :
We should be wary of attempts to repress the rhetorical
•nature of language made by those who would assert the
objectivity or neutrality of their pleas by appealing to
"reason" and for the sake of rallying against an opponent,
, whose arguments are often called "unreasonable" and
J " rhetorical. "
I
j For Burke, this elaborate analysis of "linguistic
jfoibles" (GM 319) is a matter of great importance. In terms
pf scene, he is motivated by an overwhelming sense of the
(struggles among critical, philosophical, and political
245
systems. The urgency he feels results from the "[fjeeling
that competitive ambition is a drastically over-developed
motive in the modern world" (GM xvii). To counteract this
I ~
overemphasis requires developing a method of determining its
i
linguistic element. The Grammar. based on the motto Ad
bellum purificandum. is "constructed on the belief that,
whereas an attitude of humanistic contemplation is in itself
more important by far than any method. only by method could
■it be given the body necessary for its existence even as an
I
attitude" (GM 319). For the sake of argument, he asserts,
all transcendences in language are false. To purify war, we
must "begin by taking some delight in the contemplation of j
j '
them as such" (GM 320). His ideal is thus to encourage j
jtolerance by speculation (GM 442). In dealing with the |
I I
level of motivation that even opposing doctrines share--the j
jdesire for speculation— he argues for linguistic skepticism,)
I
*an appreciation for the many ingenuities of speech. By
forestalling resolution through the discursive process of
dramatistic inquiry, he resists the confusions of fanaticism
and the impulse to represent the enemy as inherently "evil,"
an impulse that was prevalent on all sides during the 1940s.
|In extreme cases like Nazism, the evil ones (the scapegoats)
I
I
.become the unifying element for rallying support for the
'most destructive acts imaginable.
IV. The Reclamation of Rhetoric
I
A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) is more historically
j'occasional" than A Grammar of Motives in that it seeks not
only to reclaim for contemporary American criticism the many
i
resources of rhetoric, but also to help us protect ourselves
Lgainst those who would exploit for partisan reasons the
{explosive technology released by World War II. The book
picks up where the Grammar leaves off, beginning,
{appropriately enough, with a discussion of the "imagery of i
killing," the act of identification through which people
transform their local situations into a grander order,
shifting from thoughts of individual ends to thoughts of '
universal ends (RM 16). The principles of development or
transformation that such imagery relies upon need
l
characterization because i
r
[o]n every hand, we find men, in their quarrels ,
over property, preparing themselves for the i
slaughter, even to the extent of manipulating the i
profoundest grammatical, rhetorical, and symbolic
j resources of human thought to this end. Hence,
insofar as one can do so without closing his eyes
to the realities, it is relevant to attempt
analyzing the tricky ways of thought that now work
to complete the devotion of killing. (RM 264) |
I
'The key term for Burke becomes "identification"— of which !
l I
the imagery of killing is a special case. That is "the j
I
j killing of something is the changing of it, and the
.statement of the thing’s nature before and after the change
I !
'is an identifying of it" (RM 20). A rhetoric of
!
;identification would expand the traditional bounds of
247
rhetoric to include an area of expression that is "not
wholly deliberate, yet not wholly unconscious" (RM xiii).
It points us to those moments when--through acts of
|
persuasion and dissuasion, communication, and polemic--
people seek to cooperate with each other, to identify
"their" ways with the ways of "others." We seek
identification precisely because we are divided, Burke
argues, and a rhetoric based on the identification-division
dialectic would thus help us understand the "torrents of ill
I
will into which so many of our contemporaries have so avidlyj
j i
and sanctimoniously plunged" (RM xv).
Burke’s reclamation of rhetoric begins by "showing how
a rhetorical motive is often present where it is not usually
| i
recognized, or thought to belong" (RM xiii). Repeating the
same conviction he had stated in his "Author’s Note" to The
I
White Oxen and Other Stories in 1924, the argument rests on
I
jthe premise that rhetoric has fallen into disuse in critical
jcircles, partly because it was thought to name the senseless
■piling up of "rhetorical" devices for their own sake or to
sway belief through stylistic (i.e., "magical") rather than
rational means. But Burke wants to recover the idea that
rhetoric "considers the ways in which individuals are at
odds with one another, or become identified with groups more
or less at odds with one another" (RM 22). So he starts by
arguing that with identification as a key term, we run into
the paradox of substance once again. That is, in seeking to
248
identify themselves with others, people become
j'substantially" one with another, and at the same time
remain "an individual locus of motives" (21). As Burke sees
it, the function of "substance" may be essential to any
♦
terminology of motives:
A doctrine of consubstantiality. either explicit
or implicit, may be necessary to any way of life.
For substance, in the old philosophies, was an
act: and a way of life is an acting-together; and
in acting together, men have common sensations,
concepts, images, ideas, attitudes that make them
consubstantial. (RM 21)
'In our efforts to become consubstantial we expose our
essentially divided interests. "And so, in the end," Burke j
writes, "men are brought to that most tragically ironic of |
111 divisions or conflicts, wherein millions of cooperative
acts go into the preparation for one single destructive act.
i „ ,
We refer to that ultimate disease of cooperation: war (RM
22). Rhetoric is concerned with "the state of Babel after
| I
the Fall" (RM 23). As Burke sees it, reclaiming rhetoric asi
the principal means of inquiry is necessary if we are, as
critics and a culture, going to make our way through the
"flare-ups of the Human Barnyard" (RM 23).
Burke’s opening section thus ranges through the
implications of the term "identification," much as the
Grammar had begun as an exploration of "substance." The
jmanner of presentation is "dissociative" (a la de Gourmont)-
-ranging through the many distinctions liberated by
"identification." Burke’s topics include, among others,
249
"The Identifying Nature of Property," "Identification and
the Autonomous," "The Autonomy of Science," "Redemption in
|
Post-Christian Science," "Rhetoric and Primitive Magic," and
I
j'Realist Function in Rhetoric." Along the way, he makes
this important point: Acts of identification are open to
either attack or analysis, "Rhetoric comprising both the use
of persuasive resources (rhetorica utens. as with the
philippics of Demosthenes) and the study of them (rhetorica
Locens. as with Aristotle’s treatise on the "art" of
rhetoric)" (36). Burke’s "rhetoric" is the latter, and it
is guided by these convictions:
we must keep trying anything and everything,
improvising, borrowing from others, developing
from others, dialectically using one text as
comment upon another, schematizing; using the
incentive to new wanderings, returning from these
excursions to schematize again, being oversubtle
where the straining seems to promise some further
glimpse, and making amends by reduction to very
simple anecdotes. (RM 265)
I
Identification becomes, like "substance" in the Grammar and
form in Counter-Statement. the perspective enabling further
.perspectives. His pursuit of identification and division
eventually points to the rhetoric of science, primitive
magic, and socialization; persuasion becomes a key term, and
suddenly he arrives at the position at which Aristotle
begins his Rhetoric: "Rhetoric is the art of persuasion, or
a study of the means of persuasion available for any given
situation" (RM 46). This is a pivotal moment because Burke
recovers the Aristotelian emphasis on invention--finding the
250
available means of persuasion— and he reaffirms Aristotle’s
realization that one powerful way to demonstrate the
complexity of human relations is through the heuristic
process of rhetorical inquiry--the study of rhetorical
I
resources. |
! Part II of A Rhetoric of Motives investigates the
I
traditional principles of rhetoric and shows how
| I
"identification" may be generated from them. Rhetoric, as
jthe study of the uses of persuasive resources, becomes a
form of ideological inquiry. Burke expounds upon the form-
jideology pairing he had briefly presented in Counter-
Statement . bringing the terminology of rhetoric to the
Lialectic, and then focuses upon the Marxist agenda to
further demonstrate the relations between rhetoric and
■ideology. To begin with, he argues that rhetoric, in
| !
seeking to restrict the choice of action, seeks to have a
(formative effect on attitude (RM 50). The "persuasion to
Lttitude" makes it clear that, in this sense, rhetorical
jterms may be applied to poetic structures:
I
the study of lyrical devices might be classed
under the head of rhetoric, when these devices are
considered for their power to induce or
communicate states of mind to readers, even though
the kinds of assent evoked have no overt,
practical outcome. (RM 50)
Recall that in Counter-Statement. poetic form is an appeal,
an arousal of desire. Form appeals as form when it
gratifies the needs it creates. And desire has its ground
251
in belief. In the Rhetoric, form "creates" attitudes, which
I ----------------------------
I
are themselves "incipient acts" ((RM 52). The rhetorical
aspect of poetics derives from the realization that when we
recognize a formal pattern we have awakened an attitude of
"collaborative expectancy" (RM 58). Often it is the case
jthat we participate formally in the unfolding of a discourse
by "swinging along with the succession of antitheses, even
jthough [wej may not agree with the proposition that is being
presented" (RM 58). Burke identifies the rhetoric here as a
■result of the following: "You are drawn to the form, not in
your capacity as a partisan, but because of some ’universal*
!
appeal in it. And this attitude of assent may then be
J I
^transferred to the matter which happens to be associated I
with the form" (RM 58). Form may not be "persuasive" in
itself, but by its attachment to subject matter, it creates |
i
the necessary conditions for persuasion. The rhetorical
properties of form, from this perspective, are thus somewhat
indirect because they persuade by their association with
subject-matter. But Rhetoric also enters as a consequence
of the fact that the appeal of form depends upon the
ideology of the audience. Burke unites the study of
structure— a traditional concern of rhetoric— with the study
of the content these structures manipulate for ideological
reasons.
t
t Any philosophical system that seeks followers uses
♦
rhetorical devices that reveal ideological leanings. In one
252 j
of the more extended analyses of the rhetoric-form-ideology
triad, Burke uses this point to show how Marxism, despite
■its recognition of the ideological aspects of rhetoric,
nevertheless represses its rhetorical aspects in the
interest of maintaining its objectivity. Burke sees such
Loncealment as an assertion of power, and he attempts to
expand the range of rhetoric so that it can reveal the
| i
vulnerability hidden by such an assertion. Though factions !
will naturally struggle with each other, the matter becomes
more serious and deadly when one side or the other ignores I
I I
the fundamental role of ideology in its descriptions of 1
riuman motivation. j
Even more explicit about the nature of Marxist j
propaganda than he was in his speech to the American i
| I
Writers’ Congress in 1935, Burke writes in the Rhetoric 1
j I
that, "Whatever may be the claims of Marxism as a ’science,’;
its terminology is not a neutral preparation for action’ but;
I
’inducement to action’(RM 101). Even though it is !
"unsleepingly rhetorical" much of Marxism’s persuasiveness j
during the 1930s and later derived from its insistence that j
i
it is purely a science, with rhetoric "confined to the j
deliberate or unconscious deception of non-Marxist I
I
apologetics" (RM 101). Marx himself had formulated a j
machine that he could apply in the interest of shattering as
i
"deceptive ideology" traditions that were, in his analysis,
upheld by partisan economic and social classes as
253
universally valid (RM 103). Marxism seeks to expose the
workings of ideology by providing an exhaustive analysis of
;he "objective situation" in which ideology figured. Burke
points out, however, that an account of these
I
'extralinguistic factors" is an aspect of rhetorica docens
|rhetoric as the study of the available means of persuasion)
'RM 103). Further, the Marxist vocabulary itself is
’partial, or partisan" and not a dialectic "in its fullest
sense" because it did not give equally sympathetic
expression to competing principles (RM 103). Finally,
Marxism not only seeks to show the "hidden advantage" in
other terminologies, it also argues for advantages of its
own (RM 103).
I
J Burke reminds us, however, that just because Marxism
■is, like all philosophical interpretations, a rhetorical
^enterprise, we should not dismiss its contribution to a
|
rhetoric of motives. Or, as he puts it, "[W]e do not have
to believe the Marxist promises to apply the Marxist
diagnosis for rhetorical purposes" (RM 109). Burke wants to
recover the concept of ideology and to place it within the
realm of rhetorical inquiry. He mines "ideology" because it
contributes another perspective from which we can study the
available means of persuasion. Ideological inquiry is an
adjunct to rhetoric because it is equatable with "illusion"
and "mystification," which result from attempts to identify
cultural problems in terms of abstract motives, such as
254
"liberty" "dignity of the individual," "Christian
civilization," and so on (RM 108). To Burke, ideology has
several useful meanings. Some of them include: 1) the
study, development, and criticism of ideas; 2) a system of
•ideas, aiming at social or political action; 3) a set of
■interrelated terms having practical civic consequences; 4)
myth designed for purposes of governmental control; 5) a
j ,
partial and deceptive view of reality; 6) purposefully
Lanipulated over-emphasis or under-emphasis in the
discussion of social issues; and 7) an inverted genealogy of
culture, that makes for "illusion" and "mystification" by j
treating ideas as primary where they should have been
treated as derivative (RM 104). This last meaning is the i
most important for Burke’s purposes. He uses it to show
i
jthat there is a rhetorical move in the effort to discuss
| !
human relations by using god-terms, such as "consciousness" j
jor "the human condition" (RM 108), or, as he argued in 1
"Americanism"— "patriotism." When people quarrel over
jeconomic or social conditions and then introduce
considerations of "universal conditions" they are "blinded
by a principle of ’mystification’" (RM 108). The study of
ideology as mystification helps us understand the rhetorical
effectiveness of even the least "rational" arguments. In
extreme cases, such mystification can have powerful effects.
Hitler, as we saw, mystified the economic problems of the
Germans by blaming them on the "essence" of the Jews. And
255
despite the tyranny of his interpretation, his followers
I
rallied around him with enough zeal to support a major war-
ef fort.
By generating the complex interrelations among
■identification, substance, ideology, rhetoric, and
dialectic, Burke seeks in A Rhetoric of Motives to prepare
us "attitudinally" for the often divisive purposes of
rhetorica utens, the use of persuasive resources. Critical
I
awareness depends upon our recognition and elaboration of
jthe ambiguity that is the basis for agreement and !
dissension. The "range of rhetoric," in Burke’s system,
becomes far greater than in those systems that would
relegate rhetoric to the purified study of stylistic
appeals. Burke, even up to A Rhetoric of Motives,
recognizes this aspect of rhetorical inquiry, but
(supplements it with his emphasis on rhetoric’s capacity for
demonstrating the ideological forms of discourse.
V. Conclusion
Burke reminds us during the 1940s that to make, as
Hitler did, "adversaries of different fields appear as
belonging to one category only" is a dangerous and dogmatic
attempt to silence the voices of doubt. Burke recognizes
the effectiveness of polemics that would eliminate
differences for the sake of unity, but would supplement this
■normalizing tendency with a procedure for sustaining the
I 256
debate. Dramatism enacts the process of inquiry by seeking
out those ambiguities of substance from which philosophical
systems diverge. Polemic is good when it extends
controversy; it is war-like when it suppresses alternatives
through the sheer power and force of repetition. Burke’s
own writing--ever the subject of critical polemics—
s clearly that controversy may be invigorating.
He has, throughout his career, helped us prolong the debates
among opposing viewpoints with his recovery of rhetoric as
jthe procedure for considering the bases and means of human
cooperation. Living "the good life" requires revelling in
our capacity for "going beyond the criticism of experience
to a criticism of criticism" (PC 6).
demonstrate
i
I
257
Notes
1. From "Rhetoric--01d and New," 76.
2. Joel E. Spingarn had used the phrase in his essay, "The
New Criticism" in 1911, but at that time he referred to the
i '
kind of impressionistic, aesthetic criticism he and critics
like James G. Huneker practiced during the early years of
jthe twentieth century.
3. "The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ’Battle’" was written the year
after Hitler was named Time magazine’s Man-of-the-Year and
shortly after the unexpurgated edition of Mein Kampf had
been widely distributed in the United States as a featured
Book-of-the-Month Club selection.
Ji. Page references to "The Rhetoric of Hitler’s ’Battle’"
are to the version reprinted in The Philosophy of Literary
Form.
5. Burke argued for this imperative in "Revolutionary
Symbolism in America" as well, but there he supports the
ideological aim of Marxist rhetoric. In A Rhetoric of
l -----------------------------------------
Motives he describes his stance as an attempt to get
"leftist critics" to collaborate in a study of "Red
Rhetoric" (RM 101). Looking back from 1965, he notes that
;the scapegoat of Marxist ideology in the thirties was Hitler
himself. In some cases, he admits, the scapegoat mechanism
helps reduce confusion for positive ends ("Thirty Years
Later" 497).
6. In "Twelve Propositions on the Relations between
Economics and Psychology" Burke unites Marxism and
Freudianism around the concept of "symbols of authority."
The essay is another instance when Burke, as Crusius has
noted, views opposing concepts as "polarities within a union
!of opposites, never reified into mutually exclusive terms"
(359) .
7. Recall that in the thirties, critics such as Allen Tate,
who would eventually be the quintessential New Critic,
foregrounded the writer’s imaginative transformations of
cultural content.
8. Burke’s "Four Master Tropes" has, along with the Vico’s
pioneering work on the subject, greatly influenced the
tropological criticism of, among others, Harold Bloom and
layden White.
r
258
Cone Xiiss i on
[T]he main thing is to just go on writing as
though people were interested in what one has to
say (assuming that if one is interested enough
oneself, a sufficient number of passersby will
stop and listen) (maybe).
--Burke, 19531
When one gets into one’s seventy-twosies, there
are so damned many things that begin crying to get1
finished (including oneself). And alas, so it
goes.
— Burke, 19722
i
As he notes in his preface in 1952, Burke begins
I
Counter-Statement with the word "perhaps" and ends with the j
word "norm." Looking back, this fact fills him with
"unqualified delight" (xi) because it reflects his belief j
that "the quest of the norm” must "bring one to feel great
I
sympathy, and even kinship, with the ’abnorm’" (xi). The |
"perhaps" reflects his belief that criticism ought to begin j
I
las tentative explanation; the quest of the "norm" guides the
inquiry. The activity is guided by an attitude that j
i
pervades all of Burke’s work, that it is through a
"dialectic of many voices" that we may best study the
"varied ways in which men seek by symbolic means to make
259
themselves at home in social tensions” (CS xi). Ever one to
postpone the arrival at the "norm," Burke "unconsciously"
encloses the term in quotation marks at the end of the book-
-suggesting that while he has indeed sought norms in
Counter-Statement. he remains uncertain of whether such a
Liscovery may be made at all, and if so, whether these
Lormalizations can or should be the bases for critical
inquiry.
Where, precisely, does Counter-Statement end up? The
jsubject of the last section of the book ("Applications of
jthe Terminology") is rhetoric. He notes there that "we
might with profit examine the history of this word’s decay"
(210). The revolt against rhetoric has been, he argues, a
revolt against the "traditionally ceremonious" (210).
'Inferior "rhetoricians," in their pursuit of eloquence, had
confined themselves to material that had been made eloquent
by earlier artists. We have been trained, at least
recently, in a tradition that has for this reason rejected
the art of the appeal. Burke would have us rediscover this
art, noting that a rejection of rhetorical form had merely
been a rejection of those forms of appeal that had become
the "standard." We must reaffirm the major tenet of
"eloquence," (maximum of formal and symbolic "charge")
because "categorical expectancy" has diminished our capacity
to recognize the value of new forms, which are essential in
a healthy culture. Burke argues that we "must temporarily
260
at least violate the principles of conventional form, must
risk seeming ’unnatural* until the present decrees as to the
I
’natural’ are undone” (CS 211). And hence we have the
closing lines of Counter-Statement: if a writer
finds the present categorical expectancies
obstructive to his purposes, he may be justified
in violating those expectancies and in allowing
his procedures to be viewed as an oddity, as
peripheral, on the chance that other men may
eventually join him and by their convergence make
such procedures the ’norm.’ (212)
Although Burke speaks of the "writer" in generic terms here
and in this closing section on rhetoric, he clearly refers
to himself. Throughout his work, he has violated the ]
|
fixities of critical discourse, first by reclaiming rhetoricj
| I
and, second, by formulating and demonstrating the principles;
of rhetorical inquiry throughout his criticism.
The time has come to ask whether others have indeed
converged with him in his efforts to make rhetorical inquiry;
I !
a "norm." Among those critics for whom "applied criticism"
is the valued activity, Burke has had little practical
influence. Dramatism as a method of literary analysis has
certainly not been applied as frequently as have
structuralist, New Critical, or psychoanalytic frameworks.
jBut, and Burke is insistent about this throughout his work,
his task is to assess writing, in all of its forms, as a
philosophical enterprise that transcends disciplinary
I
boundaries. Because many disciplines now consider the
"representation" of theory as a fundamental aspect of their
261
inquiry, many contemporary scholars have frequently used
Burke as their guide, as a critic who can help us in our
efforts to interpret our interpretations. And because many
(disciplines now view their activity as encompassing the
criticism of criticism, Burke’s influence has been enormous.
j(More than 150 books and articles have used or commented
upon Burke’s theories extensively in the last ten years
alone.)
i '
Though Burke’s efforts to destabilize critical
(discourse with pragmatic questioning and rhetorical inquiry
diminished his influence on those who sought clear programs
of literary analysis between 1920 and 1950, today it is ;
clear that he has proved intriguing enough to warrant j
numerous re-evaluations of his work. In fact, after The I
1 -- I
I
Rhetoric of Religion much of Burke’s writing has been either!
a recapitulation of his work during this period or addressed|
I
to those modern critics who challenge or praise him.
(Praise, to Burke, normally conceals administrative purposes
that may be less than virtuous.) The re-publication of his
works by the University of California Press in the late
1960s made his work, practically speaking, more accessible,
jwhich in turn prompted an onslaught of Burkean applications.
To Burke, despite his longing for getting down to business
jwith his critics, this development was a surprise. Cowley
himself writes to Burke in 1981 that such a reappraisal was
certainly a long time coming--"owing to down-timber and
262
deadfalls you set up in the path--but the intrepid admirers
cut through the logs, went around the deadfalls, and arrived
at your kitchen door bearing incense and myrrh and checks
Ifor fifteen grand" (SC April 17, 1981).
Burke "revivalism" (a term Burke himself might use to
describe this turnabout) stems, I think, from what Clifford
Geertz calls the "rhetorical turn" in social thought. The
| ;
criticism of criticism, in other words, has been
enfranchised by the academy. Burke, as Paul de Man notes,
1 i
I
was one of the few critics to consider himself a j
|"theoretician" in the post-1960 sense of the term
^Resistance to Theory 6). If de Man’s assessment of the
Lhift in resistance to theory is correct, our reevaluation I
of Burke, now in full force, is a matter of historically !
I
[justifying current practice:
The possibility of doing literary theory, which is|
by no means to be taken for granted, has itself <
become a consciously reflected-upon question and
those who have progressed furthest in this
question are the most controversial but also the
best sources of information. (7)
Burke has indeed become a source of both information and
controversy. Culled from Jamesian pragmatism, from a view
of democracy as sanctioned pluralism, and from the
■reclamation of rhetorical inquiry, Burke’s brand of critical
jskepticism pervades modern critical theory so thoroughly
that detailing the specific appropriations of his work now
current is beyond the scope of this study. That he
263
anticipates and provides potentially useful critiques of
j
Reconstruction has been elaborated by, among others, Lewis
W. Clayton ("Identification and Divisions: Kenneth Burke and
the Yale Critics" 1986), Greig E. Henderson (Kenneth Burke:
Language and Literature as Symbolic Action 1988), W. Ross
Winterowd ("Black Holes, Indeterminacy, and Paulo Freire" i
' I
1983), and Phillip K. Thompkins ("On Hegemony— "He Gave It
I
No Name"— and Critical Structuralism in the Work of Kenneth
j I
Burke" 1985). The deconstructionist’s concern for
unsettling the metaphysics of presence--on the surface, a
perpetual process of pragmatic questioning— echoes Burke’s
l
tall for a method of inquiry that would resist becoming too
\
hopelessly itself. Yet in asserting the inescapable fact of
I
jtextual indeterminacy, deconstruction, as Henderson points
I
out, neutralizes the political reality that people behave as
| |
if meaning can be located, a point Burke makes repeatedly j
(97). In a similar vein, Burke’s emphasis on the criticism
of criticism has been reformulated by Marxists like Fredric
jjameson ("The Symbolic Inference; or, Kenneth Burke and
Ideological Analysis" 1982) and Frank Lentricchia (Criticism
Lnd Social Change 1982) in their attempts to address the
possibilities of performing radical criticism as "academic"
I
intellectuals. The list goes on.
Perhaps the most influential readings of Burke’s work
and the most practical application of it to modern writing
have come from compositionists. Concomitant with the
264
emergence of composition studies as a theoretically rich
field of inquiry, scholars like W. Ross Winterowd, William
Irmscher, Andrea Lunsford, William Covino, and others have
looked to Burke as both a source of theory and as a figure
who, like many in composition and rhetoric, have found
themselves excluded from the more serious pursuits (and
disputes) of English departments. It is not surprising that
Burke would find his way back into modern theory with the
nelp of voices once marginalized but now too eloquent to
silence.
Scholars from at least a dozen disciplines gathered in !
i
i
1984 at the fifth annual Discourse Analysis Conference at j
Temple University on "The Legacy of Kenneth Burke." Burke f
)
attended as "critic-at-large." The volume resulting from
this conference includes essays on Burke’s usefulness to
sociologists, anthropologists, mathematicians, literary
critics, rhetoricians, compositionists, economists, and i
historians. Herbert Simons, the editor of the volume,
largues that Burke has been reclaimed by those who view the
"metacritical perspective that Burke promotes as a
pluralistic alternative to objectivism and relativism" (6).
Rhetoric has returned as an inter-disciplinary activity thatj
can no longer be confined to the study of literary texts or
to ceremonious speeches.
As the means for considering writing as "partisan"
social activity, Burke’s rhetorical inquiry leads us to
265
alternative or new explanations by positing and
Lemonstrating the benefits of dialectical transformation.
The process leads him far afield, into terminologies that
seem only remotely, if at all, connected to the traditional
Lctivity of criticism. But it is nevertheless essential for
!formulating a rounded perspective on human relations. As he
puts it in Attitudes toward History.
!
! The problem of ’radiations’ force[s] us to
| consider repeatedly the labyrinthine way in which
j one term involves others. And after all, as you
progress along a traffic-laden avenue, sometimes
it’s easier to see down the side-streets than up
and down the avenue. Nor should we forget that
all those side routes have their ways of
connecting up with one another, in the
labyrinthine city of a terminology. (ATH x)
It is Burke’s heightened sense of the rhetorical nature of
■inquiry that brings him into regions commonly considered
jextra-literary. In an age of increasing specialization,
Burke’s reclamation of rhetoric might help us recognize that
^discussing our differences is a worthwhile activity, a way
Jof moving along the traffic-laden avenue. Such a rhetoric
might also help us identify the "unity-in-difference"— the
shared desire for speculating competitively and
cooperatively--that we desperately need to cultivate if we
are to postpone the ultimate resolution of our conflicts
jthrough violence. The logomachic war Burke fought from the
'1920s to the 1950s reminds us that contemporary battles--
whether academic, political, or military--have been waged
many times in our past. If we are to avoid the annihilation
266
of critical freedom, we might recall the voices of those who
bought and won.
Notes
267
1. Letter to Malcolm Cowley, 16 August 1953, Cowley File,
Newberry Library, Chicago. Qtd. in Heath, 4.
2. Letter to Howard Webb, Feb. 3, 1970. Southern Illinois
University— Carbondale. Dept, of English archives.
268
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A p p e n d x x
Abbreviations
WORKS BY KENNETH BURKE
ATH Attitudes Toward History
|
CS Counter-Statement
CWO The Complete White Oxen
GM A Grammar of Motives
I ~
i
LASA Language as Symbolic Action
PC Permanence and Change
]
PLF The Philosophy of Literary Form
RM A Rhetoric of Motives
I
RR The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology
OTHER WORKS
]
'CRKB Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke, ed. by
William H. Rueckert
SC The Selected Correspondence of Kenneth Burke and
Malcolm Cowley. 1915-1981 . ed. by Paul Jay
/

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