see “Kenneth Burke and the ‘New Rhetoric”‘ (Marie Hochmuth, Quarterly Journal of Speech, April, 1952).
Kenneth D. Renne’s article, “Education for Tragedy” (Educational Theory, November and December, 1951) while agreeing with Burke’s general emphasis, offers grounds for a “tragic” species of such, in contrast with Burke’s “comic” view. See also Kenneth D. Benne’s essay-review, “Toward a Grammar of Educational Motives” (Educational Forum, January, 1947) for his evaluation of Burke’s Grammar of Motives, from the standpoint of educators who arrived at the dramatist position by a somewhat different route. And see also, in this regard: The Improvement of Practical Intelligence: The Central Task of Education, by R. Bruce Raup, George E. Axtelle, Kenneth D. Benne, B. Othanel Smith (Harper & Bros., 1950).
While concerned with the sociology of literature in ways that only partly coincide with Burke’s emphasis, Hugh Dalziel Duncan’s Language and Literature in Society (University of Chicago Press, 1953) offers a thorough analysis of ways whereby the dramatistic perspective can be applied to problems of sociology. Donald E. Hayden’s After Conflict, Quiet; A Study of Wordsworth’s Poetry in Relation to His Life and Letters (Exposition Press, New York, 1951) is constructed in accordance with a dialectic pattern quite relevant to the dramatistic view of symbolic unfoldings. And among those many excellent volumes in the International Encyclopedia of Unified Science, particular attention should be called to “The Development of Rationalism and Empiricism” by George De Santillana and Edgar Zilsel (University of Chicago Press, 1941).
Works such as Francis Fergusson’s The Idea of the Theater (Princeton University Press, 1949) and Herbert Weisinger’s Tragedy and the Paradox of the Fortunate Fall (Michigan State College Press, 1953) almost inevitably fall within the “dramatist” orbit, because of their great stress upon dramatic forms. Fergusson’s more recent book, Dante’s Drama of the Mind (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1953), is strongly dramatistic in its treatment of the Purgatorio; and it is particularly relevant to our purposes if, as we read it, we see it as implicitly concerned with the “hierarchal psychosis.”
Notes
1. Our views represent “semanticism” mainly in the sense that the emphasis is linguistic. But this essay does not propose to be a survey of the field. And, in one most notable respect, it runs directly counter to typical “semanticist” procedures. The late Korzybski’s teachings, for instance, centered about an attack upon what he called “elementalism.” Another word for it would be “substance-thinking.” While sharing his distrust of such thinking (political “racist” theories are drastic enough grounds for such distrust), we take it that the principle of substance (and consubstantiality) cannot be eliminated from language; accordingly, we would seek rather for terms designed to make its presence as obvious as possible. Kant treated “substance” as a universal form or the mind; correspondingly, we would at least treat “substance-thinking” as a universal motive of language.
2. From the “dramatistic” point of view, for instance, experiments with animals would be categorically suspect, since animals are not typically linguistic; and experiments with children would be categorically suspect, since children are not sufficiently mature. Such material might serve suggestively, but it could not possibly have all the “dimensions” needed for the analysis of any complete linguistic performance. And we work on the assumption that our test cases should intrinsically possess such a range.
3. As for the importance of such an emphasis, consider the difference between the equation “reason equals respect for authority” aid the equation “reason equals distrust of authority.” Such equations are studied, first of all, in a nonnormative, nonpreferential way, the assumption being that the best function of education is in giving us a free approach to such linkages, which otherwise tend to call forth automatic responses, making us in effect somnambulists.
4. In sum: So far as the curriculum is concerned, its specialties would be left pretty much as they are, the biggest division being a variant of the “Cartesian split,” in this case involving the distinction between “natural motion” and “symbolic action.” But, as with semantics generally, dramatism would place special stress upon the purely terministic elements that might otherwise be mistaken for sheer “objective fact” in the nonlinguistic sense. For instance, laboratory equipment being linguistically guided in its construction, one should expect even the most objective of instruments to reveal a measure of sheerly “symbolic” genius. When considering acts in life, one may have to cut across the special realms of curriculum specialization, in so far as such acts themselves cut across these realms.
Educational Consultant: Professor Kenneth Benne, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts.
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