Reading (with) Kenneth Burke: A Primer

This primer probes the wide-ranging work of American rhetorician Kenneth Duva Burke (1897–1993) for cues to a keener understanding of what is involved when we read literature, read history and or engage in translation. It reflects on Burke’s lasting significance, interrogates some features of his eccentric method and considers the breadth of his speculations across the disciplines. In the troubled context of liberal academic studies, within the humanities and inside the ongoing debate on what it means to be human, Burke’s dramatism marks an alternative path that is undoubtedly worth exploring.