Beth Eddy is a 1996 Charlotte Newcombe Fellow and a lecturer in religion at Princeton University.

"I wish that I had written this book. It is a study in religious naturalism that , in the end, is about the pieties and impieties entailed by the language that we use. It is the first book-length study of the relationship between Burke and Ellison and the only study that takes up questions of religious naturalism in their work."—William Hart, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

• Acknowledgments xi CHAPTER ONE Identity and the Rites of Symbolic Action 1 CHAPTER TWO Kenneth Burke's Natural Pieties of Identity 25 CHAPTER THREE Catharsis and Tragedy: Kenneth Burke's Rhetoric of Sacrifice 57 CHAPTER FOUR The Spiritual Utility of Comedy 80 CHAPTER FIVE Ralph Ellison and the Vernacular Pieties of American Identity 99 CHAPTER SIX Ellison's Tragic Vision of Sacrifice 120 CHAPTER SEVEN The Blues of American Identity: Comic Transcendence in Ellison 139 CHAPTER EIGHT Both a Part of and Apart From: The Spirit and Ethics of a Religious Pragmatism 157 Notes 173 Bibliography 195 Index 199

Beth Eddy is a 1996 Charlotte Newcombe Fellow and a lecturer in religion at Princeton University.

"I wish that I had written this book. It is a study in religious naturalism that , in the end, is about the pieties and impieties entailed by the language that we use. It is the first book-length study of the relationship between Burke and Ellison and the only study that takes up questions of religious naturalism in their work."—William Hart, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

• Acknowledgments xi CHAPTER ONE Identity and the Rites of Symbolic Action 1 CHAPTER TWO Kenneth Burke's Natural Pieties of Identity 25 CHAPTER THREE Catharsis and Tragedy: Kenneth Burke's Rhetoric of Sacrifice 57 CHAPTER FOUR The Spiritual Utility of Comedy 80 CHAPTER FIVE Ralph Ellison and the Vernacular Pieties of American Identity 99 CHAPTER SIX Ellison's Tragic Vision of Sacrifice 120 CHAPTER SEVEN The Blues of American Identity: Comic Transcendence in Ellison 139 CHAPTER EIGHT Both a Part of and Apart From: The Spirit and Ethics of a Religious Pragmatism 157 Notes 173 Bibliography 195 Index 199

Beth Eddy is a 1996 Charlotte Newcombe Fellow and a lecturer in religion at Princeton University.

"I wish that I had written this book. It is a study in religious naturalism that , in the end, is about the pieties and impieties entailed by the language that we use. It is the first book-length study of the relationship between Burke and Ellison and the only study that takes up questions of religious naturalism in their work."—William Hart, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

• Acknowledgments xi CHAPTER ONE Identity and the Rites of Symbolic Action 1 CHAPTER TWO Kenneth Burke's Natural Pieties of Identity 25 CHAPTER THREE Catharsis and Tragedy: Kenneth Burke's Rhetoric of Sacrifice 57 CHAPTER FOUR The Spiritual Utility of Comedy 80 CHAPTER FIVE Ralph Ellison and the Vernacular Pieties of American Identity 99 CHAPTER SIX Ellison's Tragic Vision of Sacrifice 120 CHAPTER SEVEN The Blues of American Identity: Comic Transcendence in Ellison 139 CHAPTER EIGHT Both a Part of and Apart From: The Spirit and Ethics of a Religious Pragmatism 157 Notes 173 Bibliography 195 Index 199