Kenneth Burke, 1897-1993. American author

Links

Collection Description

Papers, 1970

1 item

Access: Open

Although Kenneth Burke briefly attended Ohio State University and Columbia University, he never graduated and can be considered a self-taught thinker who attempted to integrate scientific and philosophical concepts with his analysis of semantics and literature. In 1915, Burke moved to Greenwich Village in New York, where he was at the forefront of American modernism, conversing with writers and artists such as Marianne Moore, Jean Toomer, Alfred Stieglitz, and William Carlos Williams. After brief stints with The Dial and The Nation, he turned to literary criticism and taught at Bennington College from 1943 to 1961. By the time of his death at age ninety-eight, Burke left behind such classics in the field as The Philosophy of Literary Form (1941), Permanence and Change: An Anatomy of Purpose (1935), A Grammar of Motives (1945), and Language as Symbolic Action (1966).

Here is a signed, typescript photocopy of a speech Burke delivered in Graham Chapel on September 30, 1970, entitled "Three Stages of a Vision."  This 18-page address is a satiric exercise focusing on pollution and the general follies of homo sapiens.  He ponders a situation when the Earth becomes uninhabitable and, eventually, abandoned. 

Selected Names

Burke, Kenneth, 1897-1993.  American author

Manuscripts
Special Collections