<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_1484864728036_4447"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4448">Burkophiles,<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4449"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4447"><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_1484864728036_4450"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4451"> Thanks
to Jim and Les for the ponderable points they raise. Will get to them later.
Want to keep on the trajectory I’ve begun.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4452"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4450"><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_1484864728036_4453"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4454"> Continuing
on with my “troublesome” reading of Burke:<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4455"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4453"><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_1484864728036_4456"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4457"> In
addition to Burke’s explicit, if elliptical, fastening of the pentad to the
manifest “Trouble,” as I see it, suffusing the terms of the guilt-redemption
cycle (in “Terministic Screens”), Burke, in his “collage-like” way (Tilly
Warnock’s descriptive for Burke’s quirky style), performs the same operation
even more nonlinearly in his introduction to the order terms in<i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4458"> RR</i>. Note in particular pages 180-188 in
the chapter, “The First Three Chapters of Genesis.” These are the pages that
come just before and just after Burke’s famous chart, “Cycle of Terms Implicit
in the Idea of ‘Order’” (p. 184). Just prior to introducing those
guilt-redemption terms in elaborated form, Burke harks back to the pentad in
order to show its inadequacy, by itself, for giving a full picture of “verbal
action.” Burke says, on page 180, “The most general starting point for the
Dramatistic cycle of terms would be in the term ‘act.’” Burke goes on to
reference “the many kinds of ‘rationally’ purposive motion” that might
implicitly follow from the idea of an “act.” One example: God’s act of Creation.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4459"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4456"><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_1484864728036_4460"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4461"> However,
Burke says, this “general,” high-abstraction start for the “Dramatistic cycle
of terms” would, by itself, “not serve our present purpose,” which will be
putting “stress upon ‘sin’ or ‘guilt.’ Frankly, it [the pentad] would not be
morbid enough.”<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4462"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4460"><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_1484864728036_4463"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4464"> Morbid:
etymologically, diseased. “Of, relating to, or characteristic of disease.
Abnormally susceptible to or characterized by gloomy or unwholesome feelings”
(the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4465">Collegiate</i>, p. 807).<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4466"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4463"><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_1484864728036_4467"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4468"> How,
once again, did Burke describe that “route” down which the notion of an “act,”
and therefore all the other “general” pentadic terms the notion of an “act”
inevitably suggests, that “route” toward, also, on presumably a less-general
level of abstraction---how did Burke language that slippery slope downward that
“always” draws us on to, or efforts to withstand or guard against, some measure
or intensity of “conflict” and “victimage,” i.e., full-fledged “drama”? It is
the “gloomy route,” the “morbid” route, some manifestation of the endemic “disease”
of human symbolism.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4469"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4467"><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_1484864728036_4470"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4471"> “Morbid[ity],”
“disease”: analogous terms for “Trouble” in Burke’s “reenvisioning,” if you
will,<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4472"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4470"><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_1484864728036_4473"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4474"> On p.
17 in <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4475">PLF</i>, Burke invokes “disease” as
literally construed, yes, but also, I think, as metaphor, equivalent to the
“burden” or “discomfiture” that Burke indicates serves as, what, the “trouble”
(?) that initiates one’s drama. Burke goes on, then, to articulate this general
axiom of dramatic criticism: “. . . The true locus of assertion is not in the
DISEASE [initiating conflict, complication, violation, burden, “Trouble”], but
in the STRUCTURAL POWERS by which the poet encompasses it” [read: victimage,
sacrifice, of self or other or both]” (p. 18, emphasis in original).<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4476"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4473"><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_1484864728036_4477"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4478"> Disease
or “sickness,” with its “symptoms,” as Burke’s terms, metaphorically employed
or not, for the “Trouble” that prompts and exacerbates human dramatic conflict
is highlighted in both endings of the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4479">Grammar</i>
(pp. 317, 443). Hence Burke’s prescription
for “hypochondriasis” as salubrious ATTITUDE or regimen for coping with such
symptoms, if not “curing” this endemic epidemic. “Hypochondriasis: the attitude
of a patient who makes peace with his [sic] symptoms by becoming interested in
them.”<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4480"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4477"><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_1484864728036_4481"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4482"> In
explaining in <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4483">RR</i> the operations of
the guilt-redemption terms, Burke cannot get away from use of the pentad/hexad,
nor can anyone else. The two paradigms of action are inextricably related in
general discussion. Only by studied abstraction can the pentad be so detached,
isolated, and employed for critical use. See especially p. 188 in <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4484">RR</i> for such an integrated usage.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4485"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4481"><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_1484864728036_4486"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4487"> Here’s
the thing, though, that dawns on me in respect to the article in question in
the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4488">KBJ</i>. The authors are, as I see
it, surely right that “Trouble,” no matter how it’s phrased, drives the drama.
But, also, they are calling attention, perhaps indirectly, but still calling
attention, to a seemingly huge lacuna in the case Burke makes in the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4489">Grammar</i>. What in the foregoing text
prepares us for, especially, the first ending, the one that comes after the
“Philosophic Schools”? Where is the “Trouble” in the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4490">Grammar</i> that explains Burke’s conclusion that symbolic facility
should be likened to a “sickness” that fosters “absurd ambitions” that are
dangerous for humankind and likely unstoppable? As the authors suggest, such
“Trouble” is not in the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4491">Grammar</i> as
carefully developed analysis. The negative, the motive of perfection, the terms
for order thoroughly anatomized, theological impetus as master screen and
temptation that, when immanentized in pursuit of some ultimate secular
reverence in this imperfect world---i.e., “logology”---these later obsessions
of Burke’s that would more clearly justify the dire warning Burke makes on pp.
317-20 are nowhere present in argumentative relevance, even in Burke’s brief
treatment of the “negative” under “Agency and Purpose” (pp. 294-97).<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4492"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4486"><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_1484864728036_4493"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4494"> For
someone reading the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4495">Grammar</i> in
isolation, too much seems to be missing from that book to support something of
a prologue to the Helhaven Papers of the early 1970s. Such a prologue is what
Burke seems to be suggesting in those two endings to the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4496">Grmmar</i>. The Helhaven Papers appear after the lineaments of logology
have been drawn. </span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4493"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4600"> <o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4497"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4498"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4499"> More
later, perhaps, on the pentad as separate critical tool, on the ubiquity in
Burke of the dramatic terms for order way BEFORE Burke gets to the <i id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4500">Grammar</i> and its airy pentad, and
therefore the question, could the pentad be seen rather as the “reenvisioning”
of the messy nitty-gritties of sacrifical drama?<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4501"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4498"><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_1484864728036_4502"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4503"> Inquiring
minds want to know.<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4504"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4502"><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_1484864728036_4505"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4506"><o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4507"> </o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4508"><span style="font-size:14.0pt;line-height:115%;font-family:"Times New Roman","serif"" id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4509"> Ed<o:p id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4510"></o:p></span></div><div id="yui_3_16_0_ym19_1_1484864728036_4306">
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