Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-q99xh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-22T13:59:10.004Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Kenneth Burke's Divine Comedy: The Literary Form of The Rhetoric of Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Robert McMahon
Robert McMahon*
Affiliation:
Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In The Rhetoric of Religion, Kenneth Burke refigures Augustine's Confessions as a Platonist comedy, structuring his book as an Upward Way that imitates and overgoes the textual ascent he analyzes in Augustine. He links that ascent to the principles of hierarchy, order, guilt, and victimage: the sacrificial principle of tragedy. Yet he counters the tragic motif with a comic criticism, teaching a tolerant charity and humble irony. His comedy thus tropes the Confessions on a large scale, converting it to logology. Burke teaches us about the tendency toward perfection obvious in the Upward Way, yet inherent in all symbols. In the political realm, this tendency aims toward perfect order and works to anathematize the opposition, exerting the principle of victimage. Burke warns us against this principle, which functions as much in the rhetoric of politics as in the rhetoric of religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 104 , Issue 1 , January 1989 , pp. 53 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Augustine. Confessions. Ed. Skutella, M. Rev. Michele Pellegrino. 4th ed. Nuova Biblioteca Agostiniana 1. Rome: Citta' Nuova, 1982.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. Attitudes toward History. 3rd ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. 1945. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature, and Method. Berkeley: U of California P, 1966.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose. 3rd ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1984.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. The Philosophy of Literary Form: Studies in Symbolic Action. 3rd ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1973.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. A Rhetoric of Motives. Berkeley: U of California P, 1969.Google Scholar
Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. 1961. Berkeley: U of California P, 1970.Google Scholar
Frank, Armin Paul. Kenneth Burke. New York: Twayne, 1969.Google Scholar
Freccero, John. “Logology: Burke on St. Augustine.” White and Brose 52–67.Google Scholar
Freccero, John. “The Significance of Terza Rima.” Dante, Petrarch, Boccaccio: Studies in the Italian Trecento in Honor of Charles S. Singleton. Ed. Bernardo, Aldo S. and Pellegrini, Anthony L. Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 22. Binghamton: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1983. 3–17.Google Scholar
Hopper, Vincent Foster. Medieval Number Symbolism. New York: Columbia UP, 1938.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lentricchia, Frank. Criticism and Social Change. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1983.Google Scholar
Murray, Timothy C. “Kenneth Burke's Logology: A Mock Logomachy.” Glyph 2 (1977): 144–61.Google Scholar
Rueckert, William H., ed. Critical Responses to Kenneth Burke: 1924–1966. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1969.Google Scholar
Rueckert, William H., ed. Kenneth Burke and the Drama of Human Relations. 2nd ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1982.Google Scholar
Rueckert, William H., ed. “Some of the Many Kenneth Burkes.” White and Brose 1–30.Google Scholar
White, Hayden, and Brose, Margaret, eds. Representing Kenneth Burke. Selected Papers from the English Institute ns 6. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1982.Google Scholar