ABSTRACT
This essay outlines an analysis that aims to exemplify the subtle process of generation, representation, and regeneration that Geertz attributes to works of art in their cultural context. Above all I want to reach beyond the assumption that literature and art merely reflect institutions and attitudes. I want to consider 'motives' in Freud's sense of their multiplicity, and in Kenneth Burke's sense of categories or material conditions through which we can understand 'language and thought primarily as modes of action.'2 Of course culture shapes art, but this essay explores the correlative that art may shape culture.
