Kenneth Burke: Literature and Language as Symbolic Action by Greig E. Henderson (review)

106 LETTERS IN CANADA 1989 kitsch ou de la societe du spectacle. Juive d'origine, mais non sioniste, Robin s'est alors consacree ala traduction (du yiddish au fran<_;ais) eta la fiction, autant comme sociologue que comme romanciere; elle a etudie le roman realiste socialiste et Kafka et publie un roman. Vivant maintenant au Quebec, elle cherche a penser la litterature quebecoise eta s'y situer, refusant autant la 'bestsellerisation' que}'illusionde l'avant-garde etetant a la recherche d'une ecriture du 'hors-lieu' ou de 'de-liaison.' Elle est ainsi conduite, en terminant, a de rapides considerations sur le postmodernisme . Son 'voyage initiatique' est loin de s'arreter! En conclusion, il est permis de se poser quelques questions. Premierement , a la suite de la fin du socialisme, les intellectuels de gauche ont-ils raison de tout imputer au stalinisme? N'est-il pas plutot possible de proposer que le socialisme n'a jamais ete qu'une forme du capitalisme, qu'acces du feodalisme au capitalisme, et que maintenant le capital n'a plus besoin d'un Etat aussi autoritaire (qui est devenu, au contraire, un obstacle)? Deuxiemement, qu'en est-il de l'interdisciplinarite? 11 semble qu'elle soit devenue pretexte a tous les eclectismes et a toutes les empiries; ce qui exige de s'en remettre a une transdisciplinarite transcendantale et non empirique, ou un dispositif de pensee ou de reflexion doit preceder tout programme de recherche. Troisiemement, chez beaucoup de linguistes ou d'intellectuels qui ont tate de la linguistique, on est passe de la langue au discours (formations discursives, interdiscours, etc) plutot que de questionner le statut du langage et de la grammaire; il y a done eu une fuite en avant, dans 1'enonciation, ou au devantdu sujet, que l'on situe alors au dela: a cela Robin n'a pas echappe. Par contre et finalement, dans sa quete d'une ecriture plurilingue et d'une 'interlangue minoritaire,' c'est la parole qui s'affirme; et cette parole est bien }'essence du langage. Essence non linguistique qui est faite d'affect, de souffrance, de passion. Alors que les memes intellectuels de gauche ont cru en un salut politique et ideologique (le marxisme) ou meme litteraire (le ferninisme ou le postmodernisme), il faut reaffirmer qu'il n'y a pas de salut, selon la science ordinaire de l'homme, mais que c'est ce qu'il y a de mieux pour l'homme; c'est sa marge de manoeuvre, sa marge de jeu et de je; c'est la sa radicale subjectivite, celle qui ne s'enonce pas et ne se manifeste pas dans et par la representation. C'est peut-etre ce que Regine Robin soup<_;onne dans son appel a !'imagination et a l'imaginaire du 'hors-lieu,' a }a monstruosite de l'hybride ... (JEAN-MARC LEMELIN) Greig E. Henderson. Kenneth Burke: Literature and Language as Symbolic Action University of Georgia Press 1988. 216. us $27.50 Kenneth Burke's critical reputation and influence have waxed and waned and waxed again. Or perhaps one should say, more bluntly, that Burke HUMANITIES 107 was excorrununicated and suppressed during the long post-war hegemony of the New Criticism and has now been rehabilitated. Burke's sins, beyond brilliant idiosyncrasy and a principled evasion of reductively linear academic discourse, included his constant and purposeful violation of the intentional 'fallacy,' his refusal to confine his critical meditations to the analysis of literature qua literature, and his insistence on treating both literature and rhetoric- indeed, literature as rhetoric, as equipment for living, as symbolic action creative of social identification, communion, consubstantiality, and community. Now, in part because postmodernism and poststructuralism have changed our ways of reading, Burke's writing has become more approachable and acceptable, and the number of books and articles about or based on Burke seems to be multiplying logarithmically. Amid this profusion, Paul Jay recently asserted, there are as many 'Burkes' as books. For the nature of Burke's writings allow each author to create a 'Burke' by selecting those aspects most congenial to that author's values and purposes. Greig Henderson has attempted to select and re-present those of Burke's critical concepts most heuristically useful for the study of literary texts. While many have appreciated Burke's brilliance, few have managed to use his insights, to apply his method, to extend his critical approach to literature and language beyond the texts and particulars Burke himself discusses. Indeed, a non-reductive summaryof Burke's key concepts and method is itself a daunting task. Henderson's reading of Burke- a critic whose work is not easily encompassed, whose texts have confounded and frustrated many a reader, and whose idiosyncratic approach to literature and language particularly resists summary and methodological application - is generally both accurate and insightful. Indeed, the explication of Burke and his method is the most impressive aspect of this work. Like Frank Lentricchia's Criticism and Social Change, however, Henderson 's book is both a reading of Burke and more than a reading of Burke. Like Lentricchia, Henderson has his own project, his own purposes, for which he uses Burke. Burke, ofcourse, would approve, not necessarily of the particulars of the project, but certainly that his work should be thus used, thus made present. In a peculiar way, certain parts of Henderson's book say more about Henderson's conception of his audience than about Burke. Why, for instance, is it necessary in the late 198os to rehearse at such length the critique of the assumptions of purportedly 'intrinsic' literary criticism? Surely any active literary scholar should be familiar not only with the contributions of the 'New Criticism' (both in practical criticism and in methodology) but also with the devastating philosophical and political deconstruction of its axiomatic assumptions, and most especially of what 108 LE1TERS IN CANADA 198g it excluded from literary critical discourse. Even to note this, however, is ironically tautological given that Burke himself is a prime example of a brilliant critic illegitimately marginalized during the 1950s for sublating the false Cartesian dichotomy between 'intrinsic' and 'extrinsic,' between literature and rhetoric, between texts and contexts, especially readers. The test of theory, Henderson suggests, is its ability to 'meet the exigencies of practical criticism.' He therefore attempts not only to re-present Burke, but also to demonstrate Burke's method by applying it to practical criticism: 'to show how Burke's critical terms function when deployed to analyze texts,' including Frost's 'Mending Wall,' Forster's A Passage to India, Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Eliot's Four Quartets, and several of Shakespeare's tragedies. In this difficult task, Henderson's achievement is somewhat less impressive. His practical criticism is most satisfying where he has more of Burke's criticism to start from, as with Shakespeare. Similarly I might argue with some of his conclusions about the dialectics of language. I would certainly query his classification of Burke as a nihilist: although Burke assuredly has Nietzschean tendencies, along with very dialectical materialist tendencies, the final sublation is not nihilist, I think. I would similarly quarrel with the symmetrizing that, in the end, seems to leave ethics as one of four (along with grammatic [logos], rhetoric, and symbolic) rather than as a category ofa higher order, the sub-stance of which is provided by the tripod of the other three. But these are the sort of critical differences that are normal among colleagues, the sort that lead to serious and seminal discussions. Henderson has performed a service to our profession, which suffered a major loss when Burke was marginalized. For one thing, had we remembered Burke, we would have received the poststructuralists very differently; for Burke's version ofmany poststructuralistinsights not only came first (by several decades), but is also more subtle and useful (than, say, Derrida's). For another, Burke offers ways to conserve what is useful from the New Criticism while moving beyond its inadequacies. Practical critics who want to use Burke will find in Henderson's insightful explication a helpful, contextualized introduction and representation of Burke's critical concepts and methods. Henderson handles with minimal reductionism not only Burke's difficult texts but also the complex issues of literature and language that engender the difficulty of those texts. (RICHARD M. COE) John R. Elliott, Jr. Playing God: Medieval Mysteries on the Modern Stage Studies in Early English Drama 2 . University ofToronto Press. x, 186, illus. $35.00 Following an introductory chapter which summarizes the suppression of the mystery plays in the sixteenth century, Professor Elliott focuses next ...