The Rhetoric of Fiction

The Rhetoric of Fiction PDF Author: Wayne C. Booth
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226065596
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 573

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Book Description
The first edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the criticism of fiction and soon became a classic in the field. One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical lexicon. For this new edition, Wayne C. Booth has written an extensive Afterword in which he clarifies misunderstandings, corrects what he now views as errors, and sets forth his own recent thinking about the rhetoric of fiction. The other new feature is a Supplementary Bibliography, prepared by James Phelan in consultation with the author, which lists the important critical works of the past twenty years—two decades that Booth describes as "the richest in the history of the subject."

The Rhetoric of Fiction

The Rhetoric of Fiction PDF Author: Wayne C. Booth
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226065596
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 573

Get Book

Book Description
The first edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the criticism of fiction and soon became a classic in the field. One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical lexicon. For this new edition, Wayne C. Booth has written an extensive Afterword in which he clarifies misunderstandings, corrects what he now views as errors, and sets forth his own recent thinking about the rhetoric of fiction. The other new feature is a Supplementary Bibliography, prepared by James Phelan in consultation with the author, which lists the important critical works of the past twenty years—two decades that Booth describes as "the richest in the history of the subject."

A Rhetoric of Irony

A Rhetoric of Irony PDF Author: Wayne C. Booth
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226065537
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Perhaps no other critical label has been made to cover more ground than "irony," and in our time irony has come to have so many meanings that by itself it means almost nothing. In this work, Wayne C. Booth cuts through the resulting confusions by analyzing how we manage to share quite specific ironies—and why we often fail when we try to do so. How does a reader or listener recognize the kind of statement which requires him to reject its "clear" and "obvious" meaning? And how does any reader know where to stop, once he has embarked on the hazardous and exhilarating path of rejecting "what the words say" and reconstructing "what the author means"? In the first and longer part of his work, Booth deals with the workings of what he calls "stable irony," irony with a clear rhetorical intent. He then turns to intended instabilities—ironies that resist interpretation and finally lead to the "infinite absolute negativities" that have obsessed criticism since the Romantic period. Professor Booth is always ironically aware that no one can fathom the unfathomable. But by looking closely at unstable ironists like Samuel Becket, he shows that at least some of our commonplaces about meaninglessness require revision. Finally, he explores—with the help of Plato—the wry paradoxes that threaten any uncompromising assertion that all assertion can be undermined by the spirit of irony.

The Company We Keep

The Company We Keep PDF Author: Wayne C. Booth
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520062108
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 571

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Book Description
"Bibliography of ethical criticism": p. 505-534. Presents arguments for the relocation of ethics to the center of literature, examining periods, genres, and particular works.

Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent

Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent PDF Author: Wayne C. Booth
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226065723
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 253

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Book Description
When should I change my mind? What can I believe and what must I doubt? In this new "philosophy of good reasons" Wayne C. Booth exposes five dogmas of modernism that have too often inhibited efforts to answer these questions. Modern dogmas teach that "you cannot reason about values" and that "the job of thought is to doubt whatever can be doubted," and they leave those who accept them crippled in their efforts to think and talk together about whatever concerns them most. They have willed upon us a "befouled rhetorical climate" in which people are driven to two self-destructive extremes—defenders of reason becoming confined to ever narrower notions of logical or experimental proof and defenders of "values" becoming more and more irresponsible in trying to defend the heart, the gut, or the gonads. Booth traces the consequences of modernist assumptions through a wide range of inquiry and action: in politics, art, music, literature, and in personal efforts to find "identity" or a "self." In casting doubt on systematic doubt, the author finds that the dogmas are being questioned in almost every modern discipline. Suggesting that they be replaced with a rhetoric of "systematic assent," Booth discovers a vast, neglected reservoir of "good reasons"—many of them known to classical students of rhetoric, some still to be explored. These "good reasons" are here restored to intellectual respectability, suggesting the possibility of widespread new inquiry, in all fields, into the question, "When should I change my mind?"

The Rhetoric of RHETORIC

The Rhetoric of RHETORIC PDF Author: Wayne C. Booth
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0470765828
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
In this manifesto, distinguished critic Wayne Booth claims that communication in every corner of life can be improved if we study rhetoric closely. Written by Wayne Booth, author of the seminal book, The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961). Explores the consequences of bad rhetoric in education, in politics, and in the media. Investigates the possibility of reducing harmful conflict by practising a rhetoric that depends on deep listening by both sides.

Coming to Terms

Coming to Terms PDF Author: Seymour Benjamin Chatman
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801497360
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description


Four Modes; a Rhetoric of Modern Fiction

Four Modes; a Rhetoric of Modern Fiction PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Novelle
Languages : en
Pages : 552

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Book Description
Pt. 1: Hiawatha's Fasting / Henry Wadsworth Longfellow ; Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County / Samuel L. Clemens ; Frankie and Johnny / Anonymous ; Good man is hard to find / Flannery O'Connor ; Ice Palace / F. Scott Fitzgerald ; Spotted Horses / William Faulkner ; Oral Heritage of Written Narrative / Scholes & Kellogg ; Pt. 2: Legend of Sleepy Hollow / Washington Irving ; Hollow of the three hills / Nathaniel Hawthorne ; My Kinsman, Major Molineux / Nathaniel Hawthorne ; Real Thing / Henry James ; Secret Room / Alain Robbie-Grillet ; Fall of the house of Usher / Edgar Allan Poe ; Blackberry Winner / Robert Penn Warren ; Pictorialism in Henry James's Theory of the novel / Viola Hopkins Winner Pt. 3: To Build a Fire / Jack London ; Chrysanthemums / John Steinbeck ; Three day blow / Ernest Hemingway / Health Card / Frank Yerby ; Condor and the Guests / Evan S. Connell, Jr. ; Toward a Formalist Criticism of Fiction / William Handy Pt. 4: Silent Snow, Secret Snow / Conrad Aiken ; Araby / James Joyce ; Portrait in Georgia / Jean Toomer ; Blood-Burning Moon / Jean Toomer ; Happy Marriage / R.V. Cassill ; In the heart of the heart of the country / William H. Gass ; Nature and Forms of the lyrical novel/ Ralph Freedman Pt. 5 Adventure / Sherwood Anderson ; Night-sea Journey / John Barth ; Robert Kennedy saved from drowning / Donald Barthelme ; Bride comes to yellow sky / Stephen Crane ; Hint of an Explanation / Graham Greene ; Outcasts of Poker Flat / Bret Harte ; Haircut / Ring Lardner / Odour of Chrysanthemums / D.H. Lawrence ; Jockey / Carson McCullerrs ; Marriage a la Mode / Katherine Mansfield ; Molesters / Joyce Carol Oates ; Don't call me by my right name / James Purdy ; Gimpel the fool / Isaac Bashevis Singer ; Navy Black / John A. Williams ; Kew Gardens / Virginia Woolf.

How Fiction Works

How Fiction Works PDF Author: James Wood
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9780374173401
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
What makes a story a story? What is style? What’s the connection between realism and real life? These are some of the questions James Wood answers in How Fiction Works, the first book-length essay by the preeminent critic of his generation. Ranging widely—from Homer to David Foster Wallace, from What Maisie Knew to Make Way for Ducklings—Wood takes the reader through the basic elements of the art, step by step. The result is nothing less than a philosophy of the novel—plainspoken, funny, blunt—in the traditions of E. M. Forster’s Aspects of the Novel and Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. It sums up two decades of insight with wit and concision. It will change the way you read.

The Rhetoric of Confession

The Rhetoric of Confession PDF Author: Edward Fowler
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520912764
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 363

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Book Description
The shishosetsu is a Japanese form of autobiographical fiction that flourished during the first two decades of this century. Focusing on the works of Chikamatsu Shuko, Shiga Naoya, and Kasai Zenzo, Edward Fowler explores the complex and paradoxical nature of shishosetsu, and discusses its linguistic, literary and cultural contexts.

The Rhetoric of Character in Children's Literature

The Rhetoric of Character in Children's Literature PDF Author: Maria Nikolajeva
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
ISBN: 146167350X
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 345

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Book Description
Now available in paperback! Until now, there was no theoretical research of character in children's fiction and very few comprehensive theoretical studies of literary characters in general. In her latest intellectual foray, the author of From Mythic to Linear ponders the art of characterization. Through a variety of critical perspectives, she uncovers the essential differences between story ('what we are told') and discourse ('how we are told'), and carefully distinguishes between how these are employed in children's fiction and in general fiction. Yet another masterful work by a leading figure in contemporary criticism.