Abstract
IN CAMILLE K. LEWIS' RECENT ARTICLE, “Publish and Perish?: My Fundamentalist Education from the Inside Out,” Lewis makes public the intended final chapter of her book, Romancing the Difference: Kenneth Burke, Bob Jones University, and the Rhetoric of Religious Fundamentalism. 1 Introducing the chapter, Lewis recounts the conflict she experienced with Bob Jones University (BJU) over the chapter’s content, a struggle that eventually led to her resignation from the school in 2007. Lewis acknowledges that along her journey she has become more prophetic and less sagacious, a move readily apparent when one compares chapter six with the first five chapters. Yet Lewis’ goal is neither simply to expose nor to rant but to imagine “a productive criticism for sectarian rhetoric and religion.” 2 In short, Lewis fears that Jim Berg, dean of students at BJU, represents a recent trend toward a rhetorically tragic frame, and she puts forward instead the more comedic frame offered by Walter Wink and Jim Wallis. Lewis’ goal is certainly admirable, but at the end of the day her criticism is not as productive as it could be. Her most recent rhetoric is, from one perspective, captivating, but it is not Burkean enough, because it is not romantic enough, to use her own frame.
- Journal
- KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society
- Published
- 2008
- CompPile
- Open Access
- OA PDF Gold
- Topics
- Export
- BibTeX RIS
Citation Context
Citation data not yet available for this article.
Citation data is not available for KB Journal: The Journal of the Kenneth Burke Society. This journal's publisher does not deposit reference lists with CrossRef.
Related Articles
-
Res Rhetorica Apr 2026The rhetorical dimension of the justification for the absence of direct military support for Ukraine in Joe Biden’s statements ↗Marta Kobylska
-
Rhetoric of Health and Medicine Dec 2025The Constitution of Individual Rhetorical Agency in a Health Risk Situation: How an influencer is Putting AMR on the Agenda ↗Dorthea Roe; Jens Kjeldsen
-
Philosophy & Rhetoric Oct 2025The Intellectual and Cultural Origins of Chaïm Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca’s New Rhetoric Project: Commentaries on and Translations of Seven Foundational Articles, 1933–1958 ↗Christopher W. Tindale
-
Pedagogy Oct 2025modern rhetorical theory rhetorical criticism genre theory cultural rhetorics first-year composition writing pedagogy advanced composition creative writing writing across the curriculum graduate education two-year college service learning teacher development technical communication professional writing labor and working conditions archival research multimodality artificial intelligence literacy studies race and writing gender and writing disability studies literary studies editorial matter
-
Philosophy & Rhetoric Apr 2025Peter A. O’Connell