<html><head></head><body><div style="color:#000; background-color:#fff; font-family:HelveticaNeue, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;font-size:16px"><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4320"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4321">Burkophiles,<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4322"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4320"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4323"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4324"> I
have some “trouble,” lower-case “t,” with an article in the current edition of
the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4325">KBJournal</i>. The article is
entitled, “’Trouble with a Capital T’: Jerome S. Bruner’s Reenvisioning of
Kenneth Burke’s Dramatistic Pentad.” In a book or books of Bruner’s the authors
cite, Bruner added a sixth term to Burke’s pentad of agent, act, purpose,
agency, and scene. That sixth term is not “attitude.” The concept Bruner
attaches is “Trouble” with, yes, a capital “T.” For Bruner, it’s that sixth
term, “Trouble,” that drives the human drama, and it is contained, if
enigmatically, somewhere in the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4326">Grammar
of Motives</i>, Bruner seems to have said or implied.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4327"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4323"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4328"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4329"> The
authors say they looked everywhere in the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4330">Grammar</i>
and in Burke’s other writings and could not find “Trouble” anywhere. Bruner’s
attribution of the notion to Burke, therefore, the authors contend, has to be
rejected. They go on to show the relevance of “Trouble,” and what Bruner claims
for it as the fundamental source of drama, as a useful, viable concept.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4331"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4328"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4332"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4333"> So
far, so good, in my view. I think the authors are right on. The basic
theoretical case they make sounds bullet proof to me.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4334"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4332"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4335"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4336"> Here,
though, is potential “trouble,” as I see it. The authors say Bruner is wrong in
giving credit for this notion to Burke. It’s not in Burke. Give the credit to
Bruner with his “reenvisioning.”<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4337"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4335"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div style="text-indent:.5in" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4338"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4339"> I’d like to offer an alternative take.
“Trouble,” variously worded, suffuses Burke’s corpus, it seems to me, and is
explicitly, if elliptically, tied to the Pentad by Burke himself.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4340"></o:p></span></div><div style="text-indent:.5in" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4338"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4341"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4342"> Why
does this issue exercise me so? About twenty-five years ago, an anonymous
reviewer took a submission of mine to task for integrating the pentad and terms
implicit in the idea of order. I think I know who this reviewer was. He’s a
major Burke scholar. I wrote back an eight-to-ten-page, single-spaced response
in support of my usage. You can read the first three chapters of my Burke <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4343">Primer</i> for one particular trajectory
into the matter. You can read, as well, my “Addendum 3: The Pentad as Separate
Critical Tool” on detaching those five basic, highly-abstract terms from their
implicit relationship to the guilt-redemption cycle Burke shows them to have. <o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4344"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4341"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4345"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4346"> But
I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me get into “trouble” more directly in my next
post.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4347"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4345"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4348"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4349"><o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4350"> </o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4351"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4352"> Ed<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4353"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4351"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4354"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4355"><o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4356"> </o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4357"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4358"> P.S.
Call this rant and its follow-ups an effort to “mature” the matter via the
“collective revelation of testing and discussion,” a day or two or three in the
“parlor,” where a more or less heated conversation has been going on for ages,
where the aim is to transition possible “pseudo-statements” into more or less
“statements,” as per, at least, the admittedly truncated view of the ranter in
question. This operation is much more easily accomplished with an online
journal, with a discussion list “attached,” so to speak.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4359"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4357"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4360"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4361"> Maybe
you could call such kibitzers “conversation editors.”<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4362"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4360"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif""><br></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_2483">
</div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4363"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4364"> Forgot.
We did have one the first four years. My, how time flies. <o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484760488916_4365"></o:p></span></div></div></body></html>