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Counter-Statement
A valuable feature of the second edition (1953) of Counter-Statement was the Curriculum Criticum in which the author placed the book in terms of his later work. For this new paperback edition, Mr. Burke continues his "curve of development" in an Addendum which surveys the course of his though in subsequent books (up to the publication of his Collected Poems, 1915 - 1967 ) and work-in-progress.
244 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1953
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About the author
Kenneth Burke
137 books85 followersKenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
December 19, 2013
Picking up Burke is like visiting an old friend. I only partly mean this in the sense of old where he thinks you can get a soda for a dime and his concept of "recent" stretches back further than most people have even lived. But if you like literary criticism that is of an utterly different flavor than the look-how-much-history-I-know variety where all texts can be explained by the accumulation of contextual details and biographical facts and assumptions or, on the opposite end of the analytical spectrum, the PoMo head-trippers who rarely state and mostly "interrogate" but whose theories sometimes contain helpful diagrams and groovy quotes. I'll put off mention of the ones that put the author on the couch and psychologize.
These lit-crit varieties tend to ignore the persuasive aspects of literature, the fact that if it has been effective then it has done things, convinced you to do things, such as identifying with some characters and against others, or anticipating yet not explicitly predicting consequences of action, or thinking that the action was a logical expression of characters' inner motivations, or that the book's world substantially inflects those very motivations, etc. The way I have listed it makes it seem more programmatic than it is (even the essay titled "Program"). Occasionally he will set out a little roster of terms that verges on structuralism with its attempt to boil something down to its most basic components, but more often than not his essays are expansive and discursive but not directionless free-associational riffing.
One of Burke's greatest talents in my opinion is in his way of breathing new life into books you might have wanted to forget about, letting the dust crust over the memories of assigned reading, deadline dates, dull lectures, stressful presentations or papers. The breadth and breath of his enthusiasm blows out the cobwebs and dust-bunnies of your old file-under-boring boxes and makes you want to take back up, say, old Andre Gide or Walter Pater ( or Remy de Gourmont??) or any author buried under our own personal associations or those constructed for us by surly critics or the dictates of literary fashion. While I happen to be a fan of the PoMo mad scientists, I do mourn that they have almost entirely eclipsed the influence of Mr. Burke whose intention was clearly clarity always, to such a degree that compared to post-structuralist critics Burke's tone is almost conversational. We're talkin', of course, of old guy conversational.
Without being the slightest bit pscyoanalytic, Burke's work is always dealing with psychology, but he takes it up so naturally that it makes you wonder how there could even be criticism that does not deal with things like desire and anxiety. He deftly dismisses the analogy-that-forgets-itself in criticism that would treat literature as a dream: "They did not consider that, whereas a dream is wholly subjective, all competent art is a means of communication, however vague the artist's concept of his audience may be." He doesn't go into what would further bolster his point by noting that an account of a dream is no longer a dream but an artifact of language, but you can count on Kenneth Burke to keep a short leash on his metaphors; they never bloat into analogies, metastasize into conceits, then settle their fat asses down with the immovable presence of actual things as can happen with more metaphor-mad critics. This is because, while rarely using the word, Burke thinks of writing often in terms of craft while the pscyhocritics didn't: "And in their eagerness to point out the artist's maladjustments, the psychoanalytic critics did not take into account the elements of strength often implicated in such maladjustments." This illuminates another loveable thing about Burke: he almost reflexively looks for the other side, the underdog's position, the potential centrality of the marginal, the importance of the outsider.
These lit-crit varieties tend to ignore the persuasive aspects of literature, the fact that if it has been effective then it has done things, convinced you to do things, such as identifying with some characters and against others, or anticipating yet not explicitly predicting consequences of action, or thinking that the action was a logical expression of characters' inner motivations, or that the book's world substantially inflects those very motivations, etc. The way I have listed it makes it seem more programmatic than it is (even the essay titled "Program"). Occasionally he will set out a little roster of terms that verges on structuralism with its attempt to boil something down to its most basic components, but more often than not his essays are expansive and discursive but not directionless free-associational riffing.
One of Burke's greatest talents in my opinion is in his way of breathing new life into books you might have wanted to forget about, letting the dust crust over the memories of assigned reading, deadline dates, dull lectures, stressful presentations or papers. The breadth and breath of his enthusiasm blows out the cobwebs and dust-bunnies of your old file-under-boring boxes and makes you want to take back up, say, old Andre Gide or Walter Pater ( or Remy de Gourmont??) or any author buried under our own personal associations or those constructed for us by surly critics or the dictates of literary fashion. While I happen to be a fan of the PoMo mad scientists, I do mourn that they have almost entirely eclipsed the influence of Mr. Burke whose intention was clearly clarity always, to such a degree that compared to post-structuralist critics Burke's tone is almost conversational. We're talkin', of course, of old guy conversational.
Without being the slightest bit pscyoanalytic, Burke's work is always dealing with psychology, but he takes it up so naturally that it makes you wonder how there could even be criticism that does not deal with things like desire and anxiety. He deftly dismisses the analogy-that-forgets-itself in criticism that would treat literature as a dream: "They did not consider that, whereas a dream is wholly subjective, all competent art is a means of communication, however vague the artist's concept of his audience may be." He doesn't go into what would further bolster his point by noting that an account of a dream is no longer a dream but an artifact of language, but you can count on Kenneth Burke to keep a short leash on his metaphors; they never bloat into analogies, metastasize into conceits, then settle their fat asses down with the immovable presence of actual things as can happen with more metaphor-mad critics. This is because, while rarely using the word, Burke thinks of writing often in terms of craft while the pscyhocritics didn't: "And in their eagerness to point out the artist's maladjustments, the psychoanalytic critics did not take into account the elements of strength often implicated in such maladjustments." This illuminates another loveable thing about Burke: he almost reflexively looks for the other side, the underdog's position, the potential centrality of the marginal, the importance of the outsider.
October 12, 2023
Burke's oeuvre can sometimes feel like an heavily fortified amusement park with no gate: you can hear people having fun inside, but there doesn't seem to be any way in.
With that said, Counter-Statement is probably the the closest Burke ever came to writing a primer for his ideas. Like his other works, it often resembles a puzzle: the individual chapters are accessible, stimulating, and often amusing in their own right, but it is left to the reader to piece them together in order to reveal the bigger picture. In this case, what emerges is a broad outline of the themes that dominate his subsequent works (Permanence & Change, Grammar of Motives, Rhetoric of Motives, Rhetoric of Religion etc., etc.)
Strongly recommended with the caveat that afterwards you may feel the urge to read every single thing the man wrote.
With that said, Counter-Statement is probably the the closest Burke ever came to writing a primer for his ideas. Like his other works, it often resembles a puzzle: the individual chapters are accessible, stimulating, and often amusing in their own right, but it is left to the reader to piece them together in order to reveal the bigger picture. In this case, what emerges is a broad outline of the themes that dominate his subsequent works (Permanence & Change, Grammar of Motives, Rhetoric of Motives, Rhetoric of Religion etc., etc.)
Strongly recommended with the caveat that afterwards you may feel the urge to read every single thing the man wrote.
July 5, 2008
I learned of this book through Arnold Rampersad's very comprehensive biopgraphy of Ralph Ellison. Kenneth Burke was a good friend to Ellison, they met through Stanley Edgar Hyman (best known today as Shirley Jackson's husband, but also was instrumental in taming the beast that was the "Invisible Man" manuscript); but Burke was also a central influence on Ellison's own writing style: "Counter-Statement" being one of the most influential of Burke's writings. Written in the early thirties, C-S is a manifesto of sorts. Rather sloppy in theme, the essays jump from topic to topic in a desultory manner. But this isn't quite the drawback it would be for other essayist. This is because Burke is extremely well-read in different fields, from philosophy, to history, to politics; and anything Burke comments on, is done from the comfortable position of thorough knowledge. The main theme onto which the other essays losely attach, is an expansive explanation for how great works of art achieve their effect. Strangely, this essay is the last one in the book, which is somewhat disorienting, because the first few essays seem to base their arguements on principles explicated in the last essay. And while the last essay is very thought out, the arguement is rather tedious, as there is about twenty-five pages of term defining. This is, of course, all nessecary to make a coherent arguement, but that doesn't make it any more exciting.
One of the best essays of the collection is "Psychology and Form" where he talks about the shift from a disconneted writing which exists without knowledge of the audience to a "psychological" writing which understands what audience brings to a work of art and plays off of audience expectation. This is all familiar to lit theory students of the 21st century, but in 1930 these observations in the shift of authorial perspective had yet to be exhaustively investigated. Another brilliant essay entitled "The Poetic Process", explains the way in which greats works of art become timeless: how they take "universal forms" and individuate them to a specific circumstance. This essay more than any helps to explain the power of "Invisible Man", in that Invisible wasn't just a black man facing a crisis of identity in Harlem in the late thirties, but he was an existential everyman, struggling to validate his very exsistence every day. Of the remaining essays, "The Status of Art" is the most relavent today. In it, Burke argues that radical, or non-mainstream artists, take risks and push bounderies, developing new ways in which to tell human stories. And it is not until later, after these methods have been diluted, that they are offered to mainstream outlets, who then have no qualms with excepting what once was considered radical. This phenomenon can be seen in something like postmodernism, where a character can stop in the middle of a scence break the illusion of narrative and explain something more fully to an audience. The seeds of these methods were planted by Borges and Nabokov and then dutifully watered and pruned by the likes of Barth, Barthelme and Coover. And now, watching an episode of The Real World, the postmodern techniques are difficult to miss.
Today, Burke isn't all that well known. But this book is, as aformentioned, a manifesto, by which a struggling artist need pledge. As todays sea of options can easily sail a weak-willed writer into typical routes of artistic seafaring. And those routes are, as Burke would say, "utterance" rather than "evocation".
One of the best essays of the collection is "Psychology and Form" where he talks about the shift from a disconneted writing which exists without knowledge of the audience to a "psychological" writing which understands what audience brings to a work of art and plays off of audience expectation. This is all familiar to lit theory students of the 21st century, but in 1930 these observations in the shift of authorial perspective had yet to be exhaustively investigated. Another brilliant essay entitled "The Poetic Process", explains the way in which greats works of art become timeless: how they take "universal forms" and individuate them to a specific circumstance. This essay more than any helps to explain the power of "Invisible Man", in that Invisible wasn't just a black man facing a crisis of identity in Harlem in the late thirties, but he was an existential everyman, struggling to validate his very exsistence every day. Of the remaining essays, "The Status of Art" is the most relavent today. In it, Burke argues that radical, or non-mainstream artists, take risks and push bounderies, developing new ways in which to tell human stories. And it is not until later, after these methods have been diluted, that they are offered to mainstream outlets, who then have no qualms with excepting what once was considered radical. This phenomenon can be seen in something like postmodernism, where a character can stop in the middle of a scence break the illusion of narrative and explain something more fully to an audience. The seeds of these methods were planted by Borges and Nabokov and then dutifully watered and pruned by the likes of Barth, Barthelme and Coover. And now, watching an episode of The Real World, the postmodern techniques are difficult to miss.
Today, Burke isn't all that well known. But this book is, as aformentioned, a manifesto, by which a struggling artist need pledge. As todays sea of options can easily sail a weak-willed writer into typical routes of artistic seafaring. And those routes are, as Burke would say, "utterance" rather than "evocation".
August 26, 2021
The overtone of the book is much methodical than common readings on literature. Burke develops a dialectic that oversees systematically all conventional form of art and its' development. Few examples were given from the ancient to the medieval along with commentaries, in which its' purposes is nothing more than comparison, analogy and study. The nature of the writing in the book itself can be seen in dualism, the previous and the next, the before and the after, black and white. The view goes on much further to include history and psychological development with its' contrasting examples. What stands out best in Burke is how much he dives in on the methodology of writing and creating in both the point of view of the author and the audiences. The procedural methodology is exhaustive and thorough in treatment, giving a clear guidelines for amateurs and professional alike to reflect on processes. The discourse on dualism is meant not to discourage but encourage writers and creators in their methodologies.
November 23, 2019
Kenneth Burke says bad readers stem from the spread of literacy through compulsory education and the culture’s inability to pay attention. He introduces this idea in this book and explores it throughout his work.
Read more: https://bookoblivion.com/2019/11/22/k...
Read more: https://bookoblivion.com/2019/11/22/k...
July 2, 2022
Acquired 1997
The Word, Montreal, Quebec
The Word, Montreal, Quebec
September 17, 2012
Utter genius. I have found my new rhetorical critic hero.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews