CONTENTS

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. CONTENTS ix
3. Acknowledgments xi
4. CHAPTER ONE. Identity and the Rites of Symbolic Action 1
5. CHAPTER TWO. Kenneth Burke’s Natural Pieties of Identity 25
6. CHAPTER THREE. Catharsis and Tragedy: Kenneth Burke’s Rhetoric of Sacrifice 57
7. CHAPTER FOUR. The Spiritual Utility of Comedy 80
8. CHAPTER FIVE. Ralph Ellison and the Vernacular Pieties of American Identity 99
9. CHAPTER SIX. Ellison’s Tragic Vision of Sacrifice 120
10. CHAPTER SEVEN. The Blues of American Identity: Comic Transcendence in Ellison 139
11. CHAPTER EIGHT. Both a Part of and Apart From: The Spirit and Ethics of a Religious Pragmatism 157
12. Notes 173
13. Bibliography 195
14. Index 199