Kenneth Burke: Rhetoric and Ideology is a lucid and accessible introduction to a major twentieth-century thinker those ideas have influenced fields as diverse as literary theory, philosophy, linguistics, politics and anthropology. Stephen Bygrave explores the content of Burke's vast output of work, focusing especially on his preoccupation with the relation between language, ideology and action.
By considering Burke as a reader and writer of narratives and systems, Bygrave examines the inadequacies of earlier readings of Burke and unfolds his thought within current debates in...

A selection of key critical texts (extracts from the work of Ian Watt, Arnold Kettle, Georg Lukacs, Marilyn BUtler, Edward Said and Mikhail Bakhtin) is included to develop the reader's understanding of the issues raised, and to show the origins of current debates about the novel. The emphasis throughout is upon practice, not theory, and each chapter offers exercises in reading and studying fiction.