The Failure of the Pentad and the Emergence of the Self: Reading Stanton through Burke and Kant

• In Event: Rethinking Nineteenth Century Feminism and Femininity

Abstract

In this essay I consider the capacities of language to disclose the self. Starting from Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s “Solitude of Self,” I argue that Stanton successfully discloses the self through a reliance on, and a subsequent violation of, Burke’s dramatistic logic. Drawing on Kant’s notion of the sublime to determine the semiotic limits of Burke’s Pentad, I conclude that the disclosure of the self hinges on the failure of the Pentad.

Author

• David W Tell, Penn State University