Abstract

The essay charts some relationships among rhetoric, philosophy, and poetics in the major theoretical works by Kenneth Burke. Each is examined as a type of discourse, as a species of symbolic action, and as a term for order. The three are distinguished as different ways to order human experience. Ambiguity and interrelationships among the three are analyzed pentadically to show that Burke's own work treats rhetoric, philosophy and poetics in terms of agent-act, purpose-agency, and scene.