Tuesday, February 12, 2019
Kenneth Burke
While reading Kenneth Burke's "From a Grammar of Motives: The Five Keys of Dramatism" I found it incredibly. When he states, "Men may violently disagree about the
purposes behind a given act, or about the character of the person who did it, or how he did it, or
in what kind of situation he acted; or they may
even insist upon totally different words to name
the act itself" (1298). When we discuss movies or plays we use the terms scene, act, agent, and agency all the time to me this has never been up for debate. Still Burke points out that at some point they were. It is important to have specific words that can be used to discuss the different sections of a larger piece like a play or a movie. By having the grammatical tools there is less confusion about what part we are discussing or what ideas were developed while watching these pieces performed. Additionally, the discussion of the fact that there is always an argument about things like this proves things will never change. As Burke progresses in his writing he explains how the ideas for movies and plays are developed and the idea of the "human barnyard". Essentially, he is taking things from the everyday life and finding the perfect point to exaggerate them to and then having the characters interact with them. He creates comedy, tragedies, and love stories from this barnyard and shows how the everyday life can develop into entertainment.
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Julie,
ReplyDeleteI think it's so interesting reading pieces from ages ago and comparing them to ways of thinking today. For example, the concept of rhetoric as a means of persuasion through communication is an idea we are so very accustomed to now that it seems commonplace; however, when the idea of rhetoric was first introduced thousands of years ago, it was new and therefore required conceptualizing, theorizing, and inevitably, explaining. In terms of dramatism-- we are so used to analyzing productions in terms of scene, act, agent, and agency that we often fail to consider context. I, too, think that having these terms as defining very specific portions of productions helps immensely in organizing and actually producing pieces. It makes the process more universal and accessible, as anyone who understands those key concepts can readily apply them to any piece of work.
Hi Julie!
ReplyDeleteI like your interpretation! That quote stood out to me too and I agree with Raina about how interesting these old texts are andy yet they still are relevant in our modern society, perhaps more so than they were in the times they were written! Great insights!