Kenneth Burke

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Kenneth Duva Burke (born May 5, 1897 in Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , † November 19, 1993 in Andover ) was an American writer , literary and communication theorist .

Life

Burke began his academic life studying at Ohio State University . His first poetry and short stories , which he was able to publish in the magazine Sansculotte , published by his school friend James Light , fell into the student years . In 1918 Burke broke off his studies in order to integrate himself into the New York bohemian artist in Greenwich Village , where he met William Carlos Williams among many others . From 1920 to 1925 he published further short stories, reviews and translations, especially in The Dial until the newspaper was discontinued in 1929. From 1922 to 1936 he worked as a music critic for The Nation magazine . From 1937 he received several teaching posts at various American universities, including the New School for Social Research and the University of Chicago . In 1943 he got a permanent position at Bennington College , which he held until 1961. In 1949 he received a teaching position at Princeton , and finally in 1967 at Harvard. In 1951 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters and in 1963 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . Kenneth Burke died of heart failure on November 19, 1993 on his farm in Andover .

theory

All of Burke's theoretical work revolves around the concept of social interaction . Burke understands literature as a symbolic act in which an individual can socially realize certain human universals. Here symbol means, deviating from the usual definition, a formal representation of action, such as dreams, utopias and the like. Central is the concept of rhetoric , which is understood as a special form of symbolic interaction in which an individual tries to encourage a collective to act together by pretending an identity of the rhetorical speaker and the influenced audience. Strongly influenced by Freud , Mead , Marx , Nietzsche and Veblen , Burke is looking for the original " drama " in which such rhetorical structures can express themselves, for example as conflicts, as cooperation, as identification.

Burke does not make a distinction here between literature and reality: in his view, our social life is itself dramatically structured and can therefore be understood as a literary work; just as literary works are social structures. With the five terms of the Act (Act), the scene (Scene), the agents (Agency), the agent (agent) and the intention (Purpose) Burke seeks to provide a vocabulary with which to understand each symbolic action principle "dramatic" leaves. Understanding social dramaturgy can help us to defuse conflicts such as those presented in capitalism , which, according to Burke, is shaped by the fact that people do not handle symbols, but are handled by symbols themselves. Among the texts most frequently treated by Burke are poems by Coleridge .

Burke also became active as a novelist : The White Oxen (1924) is a collection of short stories. The experimental novel Towards a Better Life takes the form of prayers or declamations by a man isolated from society who is increasingly prey to psychological degeneration.

student

Armin Paul Frank ( Emeritus of the University of Göttingen )

Works

  • Counter statement . London 1968. - Attempt to understand literary structures as timeless universals that are expressed individually by authors. The most important method here is the analysis of topoi , rhetorical platitudes.
  • Permanence and Change (1935) - deals with the historical relativity of ethics .
  • Attitudes Toward History (1937) - How do historical events manifest themselves as psychological events in individuals?
  • Philosophy of Literary Form New York 1941. - Burke's main theoretical work discovers all verbal actions as symbolic forms, which find their realization in strategies of the author called " rituals ". One symbol is the transformation of one's own psychological conflict into one of the three main symbolic forms of "design", "prayer" and "dream". Burke repeatedly reminds us of Freud's theory of the "common daydream".
  • The rhetoric in Hitler's “Mein Kampf” (1941, German 1971). By approaching the method of discourse analysis , Burke uses Hitler's example to show that in a concrete text, immanent and external influences cannot be separated. Hitler's inflammatory pamphlet is at the same time a - albeit distorted - image of a social context and, through rhetorical strategies, demands actions to cope with this context.
  • The trilogy A Grammar of Motives (1945), A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) and Language as Symbolic Action (1966) further expands theses from philosophy . The central point is the realization that human social behavior, like literature, can be interpreted rhetorically. Burke tries to fuse psychoanalysis and Marxism .
Other works
  • The Complete White Oxen. Collected short fiction . Berkeley 1968.
  • Counter statement . London 1968.
  • The Philosophy of Literary Form . New York 1941.
  • A Grammar of Motives . Berkeley 1969.
  • A Rhetoric of Motives . Berkeley 1969.
  • Language as Symbolic Action . Berkeley 1966.
  • On Human Nature: A Gathering While Everything Flows, 1967-1984 . University of California Press, Berkeley 2003.
Translations
  • The rhetoric in Hitler's “Mein Kampf” . Frankfurt am Main 1967.
  • Poetry as a symbolic act. A theory of literature. Frankfurt am Main 1966.

literature

  • Hayden White : Representing Kenneth Burke . University Press, Baltimore, Md. 1982, ISBN 0-8018-2877-5 .
  • Pierre Smolarski: Rhetorical Circularity. About 'common ground' and 'shared intentionality' with Kenneth Burke and Michael Tomasello. In: Frank Duerr, Florian Landkammer, Julia Bahnmüller (Eds.): Cognition, Cooperation, Persuasion. Beliefs in the brain and society. Weidler Buchverlag, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-89693-630-1 , pp. 197-211.
  • Pierre Smolarski: The rhetoric of design. Shaping between subversion and affirmation. Transcript, Bielefeld 2017, ISBN 978-3-8376-3771-7 .
  • Pierre Smolarski: rhetoric of the city. Practices of showing, orientation and place-making in urban space. Transcript, Bielefeld 2017, ISBN 978-3-8376-3770-0 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Members: Kenneth Burke. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed February 19, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Burke, Kenneth
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Burke, Kenneth Duva (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer, literary and communication theorist
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1897
PLACE OF BIRTH Pittsburgh
DATE OF DEATH November 19, 1993
Place of death Andover