The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke.

• Author: Kenny, Robert Wade
• Position: Book Reviews

The Rhetorical Imagination of Kenneth Burke. By Ross Wolin. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 2001; pp. xiii + 256. $34.95.

A later inquirer, for whom materialist associationism and transcendental idealism are usually systems to be thought of rather than thought with, is not likely to learn so much through or about either. (Richards, 1960, p. 17)

The art of rhetoric can only benefit from a study of the imagination, and Kenneth Burke's writings are an ideal source from which to pursue that project. Indeed, Burke's corpus evidences an ongoing struggle to engage the imagination of the reader-to bring forth an epoche without which the Grammar is little more than a bag of words. Imagination, like a pair of spectacles, is something we can look through or something we can look at. The latter alternative is the one Wolin chooses in this book, if indeed he examines imagination at all. For myself, I see no study of imagination here and perhaps the author did not intend to give us one. He says that he explores the "meaning and significance of key concepts in Burke's thinking and provides a clear sense of how dramatism arose out of Burke's earlier theories about art, politics, and language" (p. xiii). He also says that he clarifies what each of Burke's major books is about, making his text a good refresher or introduction to Burke's work.

The greater part of The Rhetorical imagination is in fact an exercise in precis. For Wolin, Burke's writing is a knowable thing. In naming that thing he removes every obligation to think that Burke's writing imposes upon us. Not even his death had such an impact on Burke's mind. Although Wolin begins with an examination of three texts that have been "largely overlooked by readers of Burke today," namely "Approaches to Remy de Gourmont," "The Correspondence of Flaubert," and "Notes on Walter Pater" (p. 20), he neatly thereafter follows a singular pathway, proceeding from one of Burke's books to another in chronological order, each of his chapters summarizing the examined text by proceeding section by section through it; the summaries then supplemented with brief critical examinations of reviews made around the time the studied work was published. And so it goes, from Counterstatement to The Rhetoric of Religion.

The author relies heavily on Paul Jay's edited volume of the Burke/Cowley correspondence, Selzer's book on the early life of Burke, Rueckert's collection of critical reviews, and general sources...