A Grammar of Motives"A Grammar of Motives," published in 1945, is the first volume of a gigantic trilogy, planned to include A Rhetoric of Motives and A Symbolic of Motives, which will be called something like On Human Relations. The aim of the whole series is no less than the comprehensive exploration of human motives and the forms of thought and expression built around them, and its ultimate object, expression in the epigraph: 'ad bellum purificandum,' is to eliminate the whole world of conflict that can be eliminated through understanding. The method or key metaphor for the study is 'drama' or 'dramatism,' and the basic terms of analysis are the dramatistic pentad: Act, Scene, Agent, Agency, and Purpose. The Grammar, which Burke confesses in the Introduction grew from a prolegomena of a few hundred words to nearly 200,000, is a consideration of the purely internal relationship of these five terms, 'their possibilities of transformation, their range of permutations and combinations'..."—Stanley Edgar Hyman, author of The Armed Vision |
Contents
CONTAINER AND THING CONTAINED | 3 |
ANTINOMIES OF DEFINITION | 21 |
Actus and Status | 41 |
The Rhetoric of Substance | 51 |
SCOPE AND REDUCTION | 59 |
The Grounds of Creation | 69 |
SCENE | 127 |
AGENT IN GENERAL | 171 |
AGENCY AND PURPOSE | 275 |
THE DIALECTIC OF CONSTITUTIONS | 323 |
DIALECTIC IN GENERAL | 402 |
A SYMBOLIC ACTION IN A POEM BY KEATS | 447 |
B THE PROBLEM OF THE INTRINSIC | 465 |
MOTIVES AND MOTIFS IN THE POETRY OF MARIANNE MOore | 485 |
THE FOUR MASTER TROPES | 503 |
| 519 | |
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Common terms and phrases
action agency agent ambiguity anecdote Aristotelian Aristotle aspect attitude become character circumference concept considered Constitution consubstantial context derived dialectic distinction doctrine dramatic dramatistic empiricism equated essence essentially existence external fact freedom Grammar ground Hegel Hence human I. A. Richards ideal idealistic ideas imagery implicit individual insofar instance intrinsic involves kind kind of scene laissez-faire Leibniz logic lyric Marxist material materialistic means ment metaphysical metonymy monetary motion motives mystic nature negative theology object pantheism paradox particular passion passive pathetic fallacy pattern Peer Gynt pentad Phaedrus philosophy Plato poem poetry political principle properties purely purpose realm reason reduction reference relation representative rhetoric scene scene-act ratio scene-agent scenic sense situation social Socrates Spinoza statement Stoicism stress substance Symbolic synecdochic terminology things thought tion transcendence transformation translated treated tribal unity universal variant vocabulary whereby word