About this title: In this classic of literary criticism, first published in 1961, Wayne C. Booth cites many examples drawn from his wide reading of English, Continental, and American fiction as he discusses kinds of narrators (reliable and unreliable), types of narration, point-of-view, voice, etc.--and he sets the terms for literary criticism and the teaching of English for years to follow.
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Edition: First Edition Later Printing
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date Published: 1970
ISBN-13:9780226065731ISBN:0226065731
Description: Very Good- As issued No Jacket. Spine lean, corner bumps, owner's inscription on the ffep, scuffing to the covers, and other light shopwear. Text is clean. read more
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL
Date Published: 1973
ISBN-13:9780226065786ISBN:0226065782
Description: Good. No Jacket. 8vo-Between 7 3/4" and 9 3/4" Tall. 455 page book is in good condition with edgewear, scuffing of cover, discoloration on cover and page sides, slightly yellowing pages, and previous owner's name inside both covers and on page 100. 'Rhetoric' is the author's term for the means by which the writer makes knownn his vision to the reader and persuades him of its validity; and he demonstrates convinciingly that there is no essential difference between ostentatiously rhetorical ... read more
Edition: 2nd edition.
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: U. of Chicago P, Chicago, Il
Date Published: 1983
ISBN-13:9780226065588ISBN:0226065588
Description: No Jacket as issued. Pre-owner's signature on half title page, some underlings and notes, a crease on spine. Otherwise a very good copy. 552 pages. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Date Published: 1979
ISBN-13:9780226065786ISBN:0226065782
Description: Very Good. No DJ Issued. Very good. No dust jacket as issued. Very nice near fine with No writing, Not ex-library, Not a remainder. 455 p. Audience: General/trade. read more
Description: Acceptable. Ships from the UK. Former Library book. Shows definite wear, and perhaps considerable marking on inside. Your purchase also supports literacy charities. read more
Description: Very good; Collectible. 1963 University of Chicago Press hard cover-1st edition 3rd printing-some pencil underlining and note taking-some dog earring-owner's name inside cover-minor wear to dust jacket (no in mylar cover)-minor staining to page edge-otherwise cover read more
Description: Good; Collectible. 1961 University of Chicago Press hard cover-1st edition 1st printing-no dust jacket-some wear to edge of cover-some staining to page edge-otherwise binding strong contents clean-enjoy. read more
Edition: First Edition
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press, Chicago
Date Published: 1961
Description: Good+ in Very Good-dust jacket; Prior owner stamp on inside front cover. Underlining and notes. Soil. DJ is soiled and stained. 8vo; 455 pages. read more
Edition: Second Edition
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Penguin Books, New York, NY
Date Published: 1987
ISBN-13:9780140552218ISBN:0140552219
Description: Very Good. 8vo-over 7¾"-9¾" tall. Clean unmarked copy in tight binding with no owner marks and little sign of wear. Page edges are tanned from age. read more
Edition: Reprint. 9th impression 1970
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: University of Chicago Press, [Chicago]
Date Published: 1961
ISBN-13:9780226065731ISBN:0226065731
Description: Good. No dust jacket. some soiling. 455 p. 24 cm. Includes bibliography. Winner of the 1962 Phy Beta Kappa Christian Gauss Award and the 1966 David H. Russell Award of the National Council of Teachers of English read more
"Not all literary theorists choose to focus on rhetoric, of course, but Wayne Booth is particularly interested in exploring the means by which authors persuade their readers. Booth begins his book by commenting on some of the "rules" that have been promulgated about fiction writing, first discussing the admonition that the author must "show" rather than "tell." Booth cites many examples of fine fiction that seems to violate this rule, ultimately concluding that the distinction itself is simplistic and in many cases quite arbitrary. In fact, since by definition an author must make judgments and craft his narrative accordingly, a framework or base of "telling" is unavoidable. Commenting on the relatively modern conclusion (never entirely agreed upon by various authorities) that "novels must be realistic," Booth discusses the tendency of modern criticism to try to deduce universal qualities from undifferentiated kinds of fiction, thus creating generic criteria from which subsequent judgments are made, itself being an arbitrary position. Such conclusions must always be either descriptive or normative; if the former, than anything that varies from them is simply different rather than inferior, and, if the latter, than they would seem often capriciously to exclude works that have long been acclaimed and affirmed as excellent fiction, a position that is hard to defend on any objective grounds. In part, such a modern tendency results from a decreasing interest in recognizing different kinds or genres in fiction, each having different characteristics and intents. Perhaps the greatest insight that the reader can take away from this discussion is to attempt to discern what position a given author is taking in his own work, to try to identify the author's own criteria and goals, and then to ascertain how well those goals have been met in the work of fiction in question. Booth's argument is similar when addressing the demand that "All Authors Should Be Objective," ie neutral and impartial, and the demand that "True Art Ignore the Audience," ie that true artists write only for themselves. None of these "rules" can be taken at face value, all being the product of particular perspectives, limited to particular eras and theoretical schools of criticism, none, above all, being able truly to be formulated as generalizations. Overall, Booth tries to show that almost inherently the author must resort to using rhetoric, that is to say that he must write to convince the reader, to most effectively lead the reader to understand the story that he is trying to convey; no writer writes without being aware of a potential audience, and therefore writes to make his fiction understandable, and thus uses rhetoric.
There is clearly a cyclical nature to taste and thus to criteria of excellence, each age or generation reacting to and rejecting the views of that immediately before it. Booth's insights chronicle such a process, although that is not his primary intent; rather, he seems to be focused on correcting or modifying the convictions most recently in vogue. Knowing that he risks setting up his own arbitrary criterion, Booth nonetheless selects "interest" as the basis upon which he chooses to build his argument, fully recognizing that this is fluid and to some extent imprecise, to a real extent in the eye of the beholder.
The types of literary interest fall into three kinds: 1) Intellectual or cognitive; 2) Qualitative, including cause and effect, conventional expectations, abstract forms, and "promised" qualities; 3) Practical or "Human," which includes our emotional response, our concern with the characters, our moral judgments. These interests would seem to boil down to truth, beauty, and goodness, and most works contain all three,, albeit in differing proportions.
The author and the reader of a work of fiction are in a sense "created selves," different from either in real life, and it is these "created" selves that must be in essential agreement if a work of art is to "succeed" with the reader.
Booth concludes Part I ("Artistic Purity and the Rhetoric of Fiction") with a chapter on types of narrative, a chapter that presents narrative as so variable and nuanced as to be of little assistance to the common reader, in my opinion. Perhaps the most that can usefully be asserted is that simple point of view, such as first or third person, is of relatively little importance, how those points of view are utilized being of more salience.
In Part II, Booth moves to a discussion of "The Author's Voice in Fiction." In this long section he skillfully explores and illustrates his points by analyzing the role of the narrator and the rhetoric used in Fielding's Tom Jones, Sterne's Tristram Shandy, and Austen's Emma, thereby making clear his arguments in Part I.
Finally, in Part III, Booth addresses "Impersonal Narration," discussing the challenges that arise for an author when his narrator distances himself, even to the point of unreliability.; the most interesting examples involve the works of Henry James.
In summary, by focusing on the rhetoric of fiction, Booth has provided the thoughtful reader with an additional perspective, an additional tool with which to read and evaluate what he is reading. And the broader the reader's repertoire, the greater his potential enjoyment and appreciation of the fictional work in question."
"I greatly enjoyed this book. It took a long time to read (457 pages, including the afterword to the Second edition), but was well worth it.
Sure, the title 'The Rhetoric of Fiction' may sound a bit dry and pretentious, and the book itself is a bit dry (and mayhaps a little pretentious) in a few places. However, as Booth says, he really means this as a study of the construction of narrative in general, and "fiction" was just a convenient frame wherein to write the book.
No doubt, many will find the book a bit "old fashioned" (first written in 1961) but Booth himself acknowledges this in the afterword, maintaining that "the central inquiry of the book does not seem to me to have 'dated' at all." And I agree with him. In fact, the book has that high quality of readability and the feeling it is written by an interested lover of books that I think much contemporary criticism has forfeited as a useful style. While I'm sure much more work has been done on texts discussed in the book, it still works well as a look into the way narrative works.
Overall, Booth's goal is to show some of the ways that writers communicate with readers. Mainly, he deals with the different aspects of authorial distance or intimacy in a text, and the drawbacks and benefits of both approaches. Again, while technical and at times difficult to slog through, I found this to be the most readable and enjoyable work of literary criticism that I have read in a long, long time. If you're interested in reading and writing about narrative, you will probably find the book moderately interesting. If you're interested in writing narratives yourself I think this will be an invaluable read in thinking about different ways of going about it, and in considering the implications of narrative choices."
"Insofar as the title of Booth's book is The Rhetoric of Fiction, and that "rhetoric" is both the carriage of argument over words and the lack thereof, it is completely appropriate that Booth's book ends with him advancing the argument that his book has been about morality in fiction and acknowledging that most "modern" (his word) fiction is modern precisely in the lack of such morality.
Booth's survey of fictional technique is both deep and broad, and is a fantastic spur to read some (and this is perhaps a bizarre thing to say, given their great fame, but still nonetheless true, I feel) often overlooked "great writers": Fielding, Sterne, James, and Richardson, his most frequent exemplars. Indeed, in some places, this book is simply a critique of Percy Lubbock's second-hand theories borrowed from James himself, accomplished rather cleverly by looking at James's work. I began to have the idea, reading Booth's long section on James's "reflectors" that spending a year or two running down all of the revisions that the Master made in his "New York edition" would be totally worthwhile. Likewise, I am excited to read Tom Jones. I wouldn't have read it all without reading this book, I don't think.
"The author makes his readers. If he makes them badly-- that is, if he simply waits, in all purity, for the occasional reader whose perceptions and norms happen to match his own, then his conception must be lofty indeed if we are to forgive him for his bad craftsmanship. But if he makes them well-- that is, makes them see what they have never seen before, moves them into a new order of perception and experience altogether-- he finds his reward in the peers he has created."
is how Booth closes his book. And if one substitutes the concept of having something, anything, of value to articulate behind what one says, some concept that is of value to the author and is worth the trouble of articulation, for Booth's somewhat hazier concept of "morality," then the "modern" writer fits squarely into Booth's rhetoric. If it is no longer the enumeration of a moral code that is at the center of the author's project, then "modern" fiction is no longer so opaque or obtuse as Booth paints it.
Quite on its own, this book is valuable as a teaching tool, in making the reader and the writer realize that, whatever may be the aim of a particular piece of fiction, its rhetoric remains essentially the same across the spectrum of possible works and is always part of the piece of fiction itself, contained within the particular work, and more or less clear at the expense of making its argument."
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