| This dissertation is the first full-length study of Kenneth Burke's "Perspective by Incongruity" a concept introduced in his book Permanence and Change (1935). Burke attributes its genesis to his analysis of Nietzsche's styles; therefore, the content of this study necessarily involves an examination of Burke's Nietzschean intertext.; The terms of Burke's Pentad thematize four chapters, because the second chapter combines purpose and scene into a ratio. Chapter one does not have a term, since it introduces the entire project. Burke's Pentad, presented in A Grammar of Motives (1940), consists of the terms purpose, scene, agent, act, and agency, and is designed to generate perspectives. In this way, even Burke's theory of Dramatism is related to Nietzsche's "cult of perspectives" (P&C 88).; Reading Burke as primarily a Nietzschean grappling with Marxist issues is a new perspective in Burkeian studies. Conventionally, Burke is assumed to be primarily a Freudo-Marxist literary critic. Reading Nietzsche back into Burke's texts reinvigorates them by forcing a re-evaluation of his theory of language, and his relationship to psychoanalysis and Marxism. Nietzsche's influence explains his seemingly idiosyncratic treatment of the human physiology.; Burke's reading of Nietzsche also led him to supplement Marx in a unique way. Burke derived a linguistic interpretation of alienation before that was fashionable, and fashioned a method for dissolving alienation via transformations when one was much needed in the thirties.; The key concept of perspective by incongruity is examined through Burke's historical context. His writing about sparagmos in P&C is mined for its associations of images (clusters); this text involves Nietzsche. The use of invective as a source of incongruity is the topic of the fourth chapter. Burke enacts perspectives in the form of his "six pivotals," the ranges of rhetorical modes used in his only novel, Towards a Better Life. And finally, Burke's insistence on the consideration of human bodies (motion) as they produce symbols (action) is examined in his literary criticism as he worked through the poetry of Coleridge and Keats. One of Burke's most Nietzschean aspects is his attempt to reintroduce the physiology into literary criticism. |
