The Poet, the Program and the Method

Coleridge's ideal poet The poet, described in ideal perfection, brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each into each, by that synthetic and...

Burke’s Program – Educational Impact

A pandemic of indolent school children might indicate that something is wrong with the school? Kenneth Burke Here's a rewording of the first sentence in a way that makes sense to me: Is it possible that a pandemic of lazy school children might indicate that something is wrong with the school, not the children? I...

Burke’s Program – In which he pulls a Coleridge…Again

[The Bohemian's] defense is...difficult and roundabout, with the possible exception of our key-word, "curiosity," though even that is often discredited by companionship with an adjective of ill repute: "idle." Kenneth Burke Thus exuberance of mind, on the one hand, interferes with the forms of Method; but sterility of mind, on the other, wanting the spring and...

Burke’s Program – Attitudes as part of the Method

Though approach them as method, he gets a deeper sense of the attitudes behind the method Kenneth Burke This is a part of Coleridge that I had not thought about.  If we are teaching the Method, then we have teaching the attitudes behind the Method. I wonder if the Method is the attitudes with which we...

Burke – Acceptance vs. Acquiescence

"Acceptance of"--not necessarily "acquiescence to." By acceptance is meant an openness to the factors involved. One may accept a situation in thundering against it. Voltaire accepted. Acceptance is exposure.  Whether one builds a wall against the new by reaffirming the old, or seeks by a loosening to incorporate the new, he will be "accepting" in...

Burke’s Program – Living vs. Dead Discourse

Jasper Neel's Aristotle's Voice, Coleridge's essays on the Method, Burke's Terministic Screens, and now Burke's Program all talk about living discourse vs.  dead discourse. [The artist's] innovations today must be, in some way, the humanistic or cultural counterpart of the external changes brought about by industrialism, or mechanization. Kenneth Burke I think it is the...