Kenneth Burke's Way of Knowing

POSTSCRIPT AS PREFACE: When I received Kenneth Burke's response to the following piece, I was distressed to find that what was intended as an encomium had given him pain. Teaching his works during the past three years, I had been convinced that he is not just the brilliantly inventive but wrong-headed dogmatist that he had once seemed but without question the most important living critic. And I intended this piece as argument to that effect; in the language Burke plays with in his reply below, mine was a confession of a sinner come home.