Chiara Lubich's 1977 templeton prize acceptance speech: Case study in the mystical narrative

Abstract

Critical literature has largely ignored the element of purpose in Kenneth Burke's dramatistic pentad, along with its attendant philosophy of mysticism. Chiara Lubich's 1977 Templeton Prize Acceptance Speech presents rhetorical critics with a valuable opportunity to observe in practice the features of a rhetoric of purpose, as Burke has disseminated them. In fact, analysis of Lubich's speech according to Burke's criteria of purposive rhetoric suggests the existence of a discrete sub‐class of purposive rhetoric identified here as the mystical narrative.