32 Facts About Kenneth Burke

Kenneth Duva Burke was an American literary theorist, as well as poet, essayist, and novelist, who wrote on 20th-century philosophy, aesthetics, criticism, and rhetorical theory.

Kenneth Burke was unorthodox, concerning himself not only with literary texts, but with the elements of the text that interacted with the audience: social, historical, political background, author biography, etc.

Kenneth Burke attended Ohio State University to pursue courses in French, German, Greek, and Latin, but he later dropped out to move closer to New York City, where he enrolled at Columbia University.

The constraining learning environment impelled Kenneth Burke to leave Columbia, never receiving a college diploma.

Kenneth Burke later divorced Lily and, in 1933, married her sister Elizabeth Batterham, with whom he had two sons, Michael and Anthony.

Kenneth Burke served as the editor of the modernist literary magazine The Dial in 1923, and as its music critic from 1927 to 1929.

Kenneth Burke received the Dial Award in 1928 for distinguished service to American literature.

Kenneth Burke was the music critic of The Nation from 1934 to 1936, and was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1935.

Kenneth Burke's work on criticism was a driving force for placing him back into the university spotlight.

However, despite his stint lecturing at universities, Kenneth Burke was an autodidact and a self-taught scholar.

Kenneth Burke died of heart failure at his home in Andover, New Jersey, age 96.

Kenneth Burke was a lifelong interpreter of Shakespeare and was significantly influenced by Thorstein Veblen.

Kenneth Burke resisted being pigeonholed as a follower of any philosophical or political school of thought, and had a notable and very public break with the Marxists who dominated the literary criticism set in the 1930s.

Kenneth Burke corresponded with a number of literary critics, thinkers, and writers over the years, including William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Ralph Ellison, Albert Murray, Katherine Anne Porter, Jean Toomer, Hart Crane, and Marianne Moore.

Kenneth Burke was one of the first prominent American critics to appreciate and articulate the importance of Thomas Mann and Andre Gide; Kenneth Burke produced the first English translation of "Death in Venice", which first appeared in The Dial in 1924.

Beyond his contemporary influences, Kenneth Burke took Aristotle's teachings into account while developing his theories on rhetoric.

Kenneth Burke uses the metaphor of a drama to articulate this point, where interdependent characters speak and communicate with each other while allowing the others to do the same.

Also, Kenneth Burke describes identification as a function of persuasive appeal.

Kenneth Burke describes rhetoric as using words to move people or encourage action.

Kenneth Burke argued that rhetoric works to bring about change in people.

Kenneth Burke stated that rhetoric had the power to persuade people if the speaker knew how.

Kenneth Burke felt that through understanding "what is involved when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it", we could gain insight into the cognitive basis for our perception of the world.

Kenneth Burke believed that this could tell us a great deal about how we see the world.

Kenneth Burke called the social and political rhetorical analysis "dramatism" and believed that such an approach to language analysis and language usage could help us understand the basis of conflict, the virtues and dangers of cooperation, and the opportunities of identification and consubstantiality.

Kenneth Burke proposed that when we attribute motives to others, we tend to rely on ratios between five elements: act, scene, agent, agency, and purpose.

Kenneth Burke pursued literary criticism not as a formalistic enterprise but rather as an enterprise with significant sociological impact; he saw literature as "equipment for living," offering folk wisdom and common sense to people and thus guiding the way they lived their lives.

Kenneth Burke introduced the phases and their functionality through the use of a poem.

Kenneth Burke stated, "In an emphatic way, mortification is the exercising of oneself in 'virtue'; it is a systematic way of saying no to Disorder, or obediently saying yes to Order".

Kenneth Burke contended that "People so dislike the idea of division, their dislike can easily be turned against the man or group who would so much as name it, let alone proposing to act upon it".

Language, Kenneth Burke thought, doesn't simply "reflect" reality; it helps select reality as well as deflect reality.

Kenneth Burke wrote the song "One Light in a Dark Valley," later recorded by his grandson Harry Chapin.

Kenneth Burke was awarded the National Medal for Literature at the American Book Awards in 1981.