His ever-fertile writings, collected in more than fifteen books, have made his name a byword in literary theory, history, economics, linguistics, dramaturgy, rhetoric, and much else. He was one of the founders a half-century ago of what was then called the New Criticism in America. Kenneth Burke was widely known more known in scholarly circles as philosopher of language; he concentrated on the true meaning and significance of the deeper uses to which language may be put. Burke's many books including Attitudes Toward History, A grammar Of Motives, Language as Symbolic Action, On Symbols and Society, Permanence and Change, "The Rhetoric Of Religion have had an extraordinary influence on a multitude of disciplines" (# 2). Various University libraries purchased the bulk of Kenneth Burke's papers from Burke in 1974. The collection is primarily a correspondence file of letters written to Burke through 1961. Included in the papers are letters from Robert Penn Warren, Allen Tate, Ralph Ellison, Hugh Dalziel Duncan, Katherine Anne Porter, Theodore Roethke, Jean Toomer, Hart Crane, Howard Nemerov, and Marianne Moore. "The files consist of both family and professional correspondence." (# 3) A letter written by Master Kenneth Burke to Dear Mom and Lewis on August 8 1908 is the earliest of nearly 1,100 notes and letters by Burkes himself. Also of interest are the tiny spider like summaries in margins or on in margins or on the versos of letters, where he used to work out his replies. Rare books and manuscripts also had on deposit much of Burke's later correspondence, written from approximately 1959 until his death in 1993. Title for these materials is in the process of passing to the Pennsylvania State University Libraries. Kenneth Burkes book A Grammar Of Motives are the goal of all is works. After Burke's death in 1993 at the age of 96, the sculptor added the death and date and the Latin inscription Nostrae dies mortis, meaning "day of our death".
