Lewis, Burke, Proverbs, and Myth

In his essay “Symbolic Action,” Kenneth Burke, groundbreaking 20th century American rhetorical scholar, wrote on the virtues of narrative in its capacity to capture essential meanings which apply to a wide variety of divergent and complex concrete scenarios. He writes,
“Consider a proverb, for instance. Think of the endless variety of situations, distinct in their particularities, which this proverb may ‘size up,’ or attitudinally name. … These situations are all distinct in their particularities; each occurs in a totally different texture of history; yet all are classifiable together under the generalizing head of the same proverb” (78).

In this Burke expresses something remarkable and powerful about narrative to which Lewis also alludes in “Myth Became Fact”: its profound communicative potential. Narrative has a way of communicating truths which transcend mere statements, both in substance and in persuasive potential. An example of this par excellence can be seen in the Bible, on a number of levels. On the micro level, you have Jesus who utilizes parables in his preaching, stories rich with meaning which communicate something deeper than a mere statement. You have, obviously, literal proverbs as well (a whole book of them) which use the metaphorical power even more succinctly: “look to the ant, thou sluggard; observe her ways, and be wise” (Proverbs 6:6). The poetry of the Psalms offers a similar, though more abstract and less concretely narrative per se, example. On the macro level, much of the Bible is written in narrative format: the bulk of the Old Testament, the Gospels, Acts, and Revelation are all stories absolutely brimming with meaning to be interpreted. As Lewis and Burke suggest, were the Bible merely a collection of commandments on how to live etc., it would not have the life and the nuance of the Christian Scriptures. As it is, the combination of stories and statements make for an immensely rich text with enormous potential for nuanced interpretation and application to innumerable concrete circumstances.

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