Edmund Burke and the Discourse of Virtue: Studies in Rhetoric and Communication

"A major accomplishment in the study of Burke." —Choice

More than 200 years after his death, Edmund Burke remains among the most influential conservative writers in the Anglophone world. Burke’s relevance has only grown as the nature of what it means to be a conservative has become hotly contested.

And yet Burke is often discussed more than he is read. Worse, his rhetoric is often pressed into the service of other ideologies. In Edmund Burke and the Discourse of Virtue, Stephen Browne of Pennsylvania State University subjects Burke’s work to the close textual analysis it has never received.

The result of Browne's study is to present Burke and his work in a light that was clearly essential to Burke himself, one that illuminates the link between rhetoric and action that is key to understanding Burke, his career, his work, and his influence on contemporary conservatism.

Readers interested in the development of conversative philosophy, politics, and writing from its earliest roots will value this rare and illuminating work.