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Kenneth Burke, John Dewey, And The Rhetoric Of Aesthetics, Meridith Reed

Theses and Dissertations

Kenneth Burke and John Dewey each published books on aesthetics in the 1930s. These texts present parallel conceptions of aesthetics as holding a distinctly rhetorical role in society. My project is to line up these theories, focusing particularly on two key terms in each theory: Burke's eloquence and Dewey's expression. Together, these two terms explain what constitutes an aesthetic experience and explain how an aesthetic experience can open up individuals in a society to a variety of perspectives and identifications. As individuals are allowed to inhabit the experiences of others through their interactions with art, they are poised to …