Читать книгу Essays Toward a Symbolic of Motives, 1950–1955 - Kenneth Burke - Страница 8

Preface

The purpose of this collection is to finally make available in a single volume the essential texts, some long out of print and hard to come by, some never published, from Burke’s earliest version of A Symbolic of Motives. Some of the texts included here have been readily available in Language as Symbolic Action—such as the “Goethe’s Faust, Part I” essay—but others have not, and they include most of the rest of the material in this collection. I have briefly discussed all of these selections in the Introduction, “Versions of A Symbolic of Motives.”

I am a big believer in the power of books, of having things readily available in a single volume one can take off the shelf and study over and over again. I have known most of the essays for a long time, but it has always been my ambition to have them in a single book on the shelf next to Burke’s other books. Thanks to David Blakesley, Parlor Press, and my wife Barbara, I have finally realized that ambition in this, my last, Burke project.

William H. Rueckert

Fairport, NY

January, 2003