Kenneth Burke on Shakespeare
Praise for Kenneth Burke on ShakespeareOf all the American "New Critics," Kenneth Burke has been the most  interesting to critics and scholars in recent years. In gathering his  writings on Shakespeare, Scott Newstok has done an invaluable service, not  least because some twenty-five percent of the material is published here  for the first time. Burke's central concern is with dramatic form, which is  conceived both precisely, in respect to the workings of the plays, and  generously, with wide-ranging rhetorical, social, and human awareness.  Though Burke was far more than a literary critic, these essays bring out  how important literary expression was to his ideas of human motives and  possibilities. There is something for everyone here: even those most at  home with Burke and Shakespeare will find surprises and fresh suggestions  throughout.--Paul Alpers,  Professor Emeritus,  UC BerkeleyScott Newstok's well-edited collection of Kenneth Burke's essays on  Shakespeare is an authentic augmentation of the best modern criticism we  have on Shakespeare. Burke, a superb rhetorician, confronts daringly the  triple greatness of the greatest of all writers ever: cognitive power,  linguistic richness, and a whole cosmos of persuasive women and men made up  out of words.--Harold Bloom,  Sterling Professor of Humanities, YaleAs my guides in reading Shakespeare, I name first Kenneth Burke, an  American regarded by various of his fellow citizens as the equal of the  most formidable literary minds of the American twentieth century, who wrote  repeatedly on Shakespeare as well and as consistently as anyone might be  thought to have done.--Stanley Cavell,  Walter M. Cabot Professor Emeritus of Aesthetics and the General Theory of  Value, Harvard UniversityKenneth Burke's insights into how Shakespeare's plays work-- as poetry,  drama, and theater--are as profound as Aristotle's insights on tragedy,  Freud's on dreams, and Stanislavsky's on acting.  What treasure, to have  all this at last between two covers!--Toni Dorfman, Yale Theater StudiesAge cannot wither Kenneth Burke's reflections on Shakespeare, which are  as fresh, vital, and quirky now as they were when they first appeared. This  volume would be worth having for the celebrated essays on Othello  and King Lear alone, but it is particularly gratifying to find so  many other remarkable displays of Burke's quicksilver mind.--Stephen Greenblatt, Cogan University Professor of the  Humanities,  Harvard UniversityKenneth Burke turns to Shakespearean drama to find some paradigm of  true community. The relation of literature to politics, including modern  political religions, from Puritan theocracies to totalitarianisms of Left  or Right, is Burke's burden even when he seems to be literary in the most  technical sense.-- Geoffrey Hartman, Sterling Professor Emeritus of English and  Comparative Literature, Yale UniversityI have been inspired by the example of Kenneth Burke for his repeated  emphasis on the inseparability of language, rhetoric, and discourse from  political and social issues and for his failure to observe the decorum of a  more restricted kind of literary criticism.--Patricia Parker, Margery Bailey Professor of English and Dramatic  Literature,  Stanford UniversityBurke's marvelously inventive essays on Shakespeare's plays are too  valuable a national resource to languish in the world out of print.--William H. Pritchard, Henry Clay Folger Professor of English,  Amherst College--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.