A Grammar of Motives

By Kenneth Burke,

Book cover of A Grammar of Motives

Book description

Mr. Burke contributes an introductory and summarizing remark, "What is involved, when we say what people are doing and why they are doing it? An answer to that question is the subject of this book. The book is concerned with the basic forms of through which, in accordance with the…

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Why read it?

1 author picked A Grammar of Motives as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This is one of those lost academic works of genius of the 1950s, in which Burke, an English Professor, uses the idea of “grammar” to explain the motivations of characters in dramatic situations. This book inspired me to write about money as a quite literal “plot”—a way people tell stories about themselves and the universe.

From Frederick's list on what money is, from beginning to Bitcoin.

If you love A Grammar of Motives...

Ad

Book cover of Tap Dancing on Everest: A Young Doctor's Unlikely Adventure

Tap Dancing on Everest by Mimi Zieman,

Tap Dancing on Everest, part coming-of-age memoir, part true-survival adventure story, is about a young medical student, the daughter of a Holocaust survivor raised in N.Y.C., who battles self-doubt to serve as the doctor—and only woman—on a remote Everest climb in Tibet.

The team attempts a new route up…

Want books like A Grammar of Motives?

Our community of 12,000+ authors has personally recommended 100 books like A Grammar of Motives.

Browse books like A Grammar of Motives

Book cover of The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time
Book cover of The Commercial Revolution of the Middle Ages, 950-1350
Book cover of Rabbit Is Rich

Share your top 3 reads of 2024!

And get a beautiful page showing off your 3 favorite reads.

1,898

readers submitted
so far, will you?

Ad

📚 If you like A Grammar of Motives, you might also like...

Book cover of Loveland

Loveland by Susan Ostrov,

What happens when a feminist who studies romance turns the lens on her own romantic adventures?

Loveland is about how the author came to understand this journey to the far country of love—dating, marriage, a forbidden love affair, an unusual love affair as an older woman—as part of a larger…

Book cover of Norman Mailer at 100: Conversations, Correlations, Confrontations

Norman Mailer at 100 by Robert J. Begiebing,

Winner of the Robert F. Lucid Award for Mailer Studies.

Celebrating Mailer's centenary and the seventy-fifth publication of The Naked and the Dead, the book illustrates how Mailer remains a provocative presence in American letters.

From the debates of the nation's founders, to the revolutionary traditions of western romanticism,…

5 book lists we think you will like!

Interested in logical reasoning, thinking, and epistemology?

Thinking 48 books
Epistemology 49 books