KENNETH BURKE: FROM MYTH TO ECOLOGY (2013)
NOTE ON BACK COVER:
Kenneth Burke: From Myth to Ecology is a pioneering study of a remarkable thinker’s approach to those founding narratives, those essential structures of thought, which cannot be credited to any one individual but rather belong to the whole community.
As such, it explores the way Burke developed an increasingly ‘green’ perspective on the stories we tell one another in order to make sense of our world.
In celebrating Burke’s achievement, Coupe presents us with a complete picture of a mind which is comprehensive, compassionate, and ‘comic’.
For Burke, myth is the chief means by which humanity can come to terms with itself and its own dangerous ambitions. Hence to be alert to the way myth functions is to become responsible towards the planet which is our home. In emphasising this aspect of Burke’s work, Coupe argues that Burke’s theory of myth is urgently contemporary.
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This is a revised version of Kenneth Burke on Myth.
Responses to KENNETH BURKE ON MYTH (2005) — earlier version of this volume
In his review for the KB Journal Daniel Smith writes:
Following his introductory remarks, Coupe performs a virtuoso reading of Burke that spans five chapters. … One of the most intriguing parts of this final chapter is Coupe’s suggestion—one carried over into the book’s conclusion—that Burke himself can be considered a mythmaker, and that the rhetorical re-iteration and performance of myth can be a viable form of transformative social action.
Coupe’s Burke-inspired ideas about the transformative potentials of myth embraces the para-religious dimensions of Burke’s thought, something avoided by many Burkeans. He doesn’t describe it as such, but Coupe extracts from Burke’s corpus what might be called a comic religiosity, which is quite open to learning from Eastern and Western religious and spiritual traditions but at the same time makes it quite difficult for its ‘followers’ to be self-righteousness or dogmatic.
Whatever readers of Coupe’s book may think of the content of its argument—and there is substantial content to engage—it is difficult to deny that Coupe’s project performs for us something all too rare in Burke scholarship: the embodiment of Burke’s ‘impious’ and comically religious spirit. And this, finally, is what makes Kenneth Burke on Myth a must-read.
Susan Rowland in her review for Harvest: International Journal for Jungian Studies writes:
Coupe’s book is a wonderfully lucid introduction to a now neglected thinker. In showing the importance of Burke to the modern world, he also demonstrates why we need to look again at those thinkers who, like Jung, offer a re-evaluation of the religious impulse in man. It matters to this century even more than to the last.
Responses to KENNETH BURKE: FROM MYTH TO ECOLOGY (2013)
1.In her review in Green Letters, Isabel Galleymore writes:
Aware of Burke’s focus upon the human as distinct from the non-human (through the ‘symbolic act’) and how this may appear anthropocentric, Coupe makes sure to explain that Burke ‘wishes to put humanity in its place’. .. Coupe advocates Burke’s ‘Nature’ and ‘Supernature’ as essential to the corrective process. After all, ‘Nature’ puts the human in his/her place with regard to human life and ‘Supernature’ puts the human in his/her place by recognising and revealing the human need for a spiritual beyond. Such acknowledgement of the importance of Nature, as well as nature, forms a refreshing and thought-provoking conclusion that challenges recent green scholarship influenced by Timothy Morton’s Ecology without Nature.
2.Dave Measel gives a lively assessment of the book on YouTube: