<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_1484766216461_4398"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4399">Burkophiles,<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4400"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4398"><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_1484766216461_4401"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4402"> First
off, let’s go to where Burke explicitly, if elliptically (that’s Burke’s style,
right?), ties his pentad to the “Trouble” that is inherent in what Burke labels
the “Iron Law of History,” humankind’s lamentable addiction to the guilt-sacrifice-redemption
cycle. The terms Burke employs here, as implicit in the pentad, are analogous
to the word “Trouble,” or can be subsumed under its general heading: “drama,”
“conflict,” and “victimage.” “Drama” and “conflict” are inseparably related. Merriam-Webster’s
defines “drama” as “a state, situation, or series of events” having a “serious
tone” and “involving interesting or intense conflict of forces” (the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4403">Collegiate</i>, Eleventh Edition, p. 378).
The simplest definition of “drama” I use in the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4404">Primer</i> is, moral conflict to set right a situation gone wrong, or
prevent a situation from going wrong. Symbolizers are always on the edge of
full-fledged drama, rule violation, failure to live up to expectations, leading
to “conflict.” That’s why there’s surveillance, in the family, in school, in
the workplace, in the community, in the Garden of Eden before the
Fall---everywhere, even before a big-time violation of the rule or rules that
undergird the established hierarchal structure in those venues occurs.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4405"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4401"><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_1484766216461_4406"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4407"> Here’s
how Burke vouchsafes that trajectory from the pentad to the potentially dire
“Trouble” given shape by the cycle of terms implicit in the idea of order:<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4408"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4406"><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_1484766216461_4409"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4410"> “There
is a gloomy route, of this sort: If ACTION is to be our key term, then DRAMA;
for drama is the culminative form of action (this is a variant of the
‘perfection’ principle discussed in the previous chapter [culmination: the
climax of the trajectory]. But if DRAMA, then CONFLICT. And if CONFLICT, then
VICTIMAGE. Dramatism is always [note: ALWAYS] on the edge of this vexing
problem [read: TROUBLE], that comes to a culmination in tragedy, the song of
the scapegoat [see Leviticus, Chapter 16, on the function of the “scapegoat” on
the Day of Atonement in Ancient Israel, and Burke’s congruent description of
that function in “The Dialectic of the Scapegoat,” <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4411">Grammar</i>, pp. 406-408]” (“Terministic Screens,” <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4412">LASA</i>, pp. 54-55, emphasis in original).<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4413"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4409"><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_1484766216461_4414"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4415"> “Perfection”
in Burke is analogous to “entelechy,” “the actualization of form-giving cause
as contrasted with potential existence , . . . an inherent regulating and
directing force . . . .” Meriam-Webster’s, p. 416. See, also, <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4416">DD</i>, Appendix A, pp. 57-58.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4417"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4414"><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_1484766216461_4418"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4419"> Which
is to say, anytime you see an actor performing an action for some purpose, employing
certain means or steps or stages in attempting to achieve that end, in response
to necessarily scenic or situational pressures, rules, or constraints, look for
a troublesome conflict of some kind, actual or potential, driving that action,
however overtly or subtly. Warding off possible “trouble” in the form of feared
“conflict” and its likely victimizing consequences is as dramatic as acting to
overcome them.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4420"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4418"><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_1484766216461_4421"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4422"> I
remember taking college Shakespeare way back when. Professor Bomberger made us
diagram selected plays we were not able to get to in class. “Rising action”
began with what we were to label the initial “complication.” Call it just as
readily the opening “conflict” or “trouble.” No human action in real life, or
in literary or theatrical drama, happens without that “gloomy” route, of lesser
degree (comedy) or more (say, burlesque, melodrama, or tragedy) lurking as
threat up ahead.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4423"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4421"><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_1484766216461_4424"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4425"> Next:
The “Trouble” initiating “drama” (as the end-result of pentadic implications)
as “morbid[ity]” or “sickness” requiring “hypochondriasis” as program of
intervention and melioration.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4426"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4424"><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_1484766216461_4427"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4428"><o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4429"> </o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4430"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4431"> Ed<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4432"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4430"><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_1484766216461_4433"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4434"><o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4435"> </o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_2597">
</div><div dir="ltr" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4436"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4437"> P.S.
After my first post on this matter, I received a reply from a subscriber. I
responded to the post by hitting “reply” rather than “reply all,” thinking that
would send the message only to the respondent in question. If that reply went
out to all subscribers to the list, I apologize. It contained private
information not for general posting. I’ve changed the title of this thread so
as to be sure not to repost that private information. <o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484766216461_4438"></o:p></span></div></div></body></html>