The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology

Univ of California Press (1970)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

"But the point of Burke's work, and the significance of his achievement, is not that he points out that religion and language affect each other, for this has been said before, but that he proceeds to demonstrate how this is so by reference to a specific symbolic context. After a discussion 'On Words and The Word,' he analysess verbal action in St. Augustine's Confessions. He then discusses the first three chapters of Genesis, and ends with a brilliant and profound 'Prologue in Heaven,' an imaginary dialogue between the Lord and Satan in which he proposes that we begin our study of human motives with complex theories of transcendence,' rather than with terminologies developed in the use of simplified laboratory equipment.... Burke now feels, after some forty years of search, that he has created a model of the symbolic act which breaks through the rigidities of the 'sacred-secular' dichotomy, and at the same time shows us how we get from secular and sacred realms of action over the bridge of language.... Religious systems are systems of action based on communication in society. They are great social dramas which are played out on earth before an ultimate audience, God. But where theology confronts the developed cosmological drama in the 'grand style,' that is, as a fully developed cosmological drama for its religious content, the 'logologer' can be further studied not directly as knowledge but as anecdotes that help reveal for us the quandaries of human governance." --Hugh Dalziel Duncan from Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke, 1924 - 1966, edited by William H. Rueckert (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1969).

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 99,245

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Toward a Systemic Theory of Symbolic Action.Patrick Michael Mckercher - 1993 - Dissertation, The University of British Columbia (Canada)
Kenneth Burke's Comedy of Motives.Angelo Anthony Bonadonna - 1994 - Dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-02

Downloads
7 (#1,619,272)

6 months
3 (#1,454,460)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references