Imagine that you enter a parlor. You come late. When you
arrive, others have long preceded you, and they are engaged in
a heated discussion, a discussion too heated for them to pause
and tell you exactly what it is about. In fact, the discussion
had already begun long before any of them got there, so that no
one present is qualified to retrace for you all the steps that
had gone before. You listen for a while, until you decide that
you have caught the tenor of the argument; then you put in your
oar. Someone answers you; you answer him; another comes to your
defense; another aligns himself against you, to either the
embarrassment or gratification of your opponent, depending upon
the quality of your ally's assistance. However, the discussion
is interminable. The hour grows late, you must depart. And
you do depart, with the discussion still vigorously in progress.
Just as fascinating to me here is the way Gordon's narrative, which I
think I prefer to Burke's, leaves out the agonistic character of the
discussion: in Burke, writing in 1941, the assumption was that the
conversation _had_ to be a contest.
-- Russ
__|~_
Russell A. Hunt __|~_)_ __)_|~_ Department of English
St. Thomas University )_ __)_|_)__ __) PHONE: (506) 363-3891
Fredericton, New Brunswick | )____) | FAX: (506) 450-9615
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