Film Mavericks in Action ─ New Hollywood, New Rhetoric, and Kenneth Burke

The book's ambition is to uniquely yoke familiar histories of New Hollywood with aspects of critical theory that, since the 1950s, have embraced advances in the New Rhetoric as pioneered by literary theorist, philosopher, social analyst and educator Kenneth Burke (1897-1993). The study tracks the career arcs of Hollywood film directors Peter Bogdanovich, Martin Scorsese, Michael Cimino and Francis Ford Coppola whose productions are regarded as Burkean perspectives by incongruity. This analysis is contextualized within an overview that, from the 1920s to the present, considers Hollywood as a "languaged industry" that is grounded in Burkean principles of Order, identification, hierarchy, courtship and ambiguities of substance. The project is designed to serve the interests of colleagues and students in Rhetorical Theory, Film Education, Creative Writing, American Studies, Production Studies, and Film and Media Studies.

Alan Taylor is an Alumnus of the University of Mainz, Keele University, the IOE London and the London Film School. Since graduating also from the Department of Education, University of Oxford, he has managed Film and Media courses in the U.K. and lectured at Universities in Europe and South Africa where he has served as both Professor of Film and as External Verifier of Film and Media courses for that country's Council of Higher Education Quality Committee.