Wayne Clayson Booth (February 22, 1921, in
American Fork, Utah – October 10, 2005, in
Chicago, Illinois
(''City in a Garden''); I Will
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) was an American
literary critic
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...
. He was the
George M. Pullman Distinguished Service
Professor Emeritus
''Emeritus'' (; female: ''emerita'') is an adjective used to designate a retired chair, professor, pastor, bishop, pope, director, president, prime minister, rabbi, emperor, or other person who has been "permitted to retain as an honorary title ...
in English Language & Literature and the College at the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. His work followed largely from the
Chicago school of
literary criticism
Literary criticism (or literary studies) is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical discussion of literature's goals and methods. Th ...
.
Life
Booth was born in
Utah
Utah ( , ) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. Utah is a landlocked U.S. state bordered to its east by Colorado, to its northeast by Wyoming, to its north by Idaho, to its south by Arizona, and to it ...
of
Mormon
Mormons are a religious and cultural group related to Mormonism, the principal branch of the Latter Day Saint movement started by Joseph Smith in upstate New York during the 1820s. After Smith's death in 1844, the movement split into several ...
parents, Wayne Chipman Booth and Lillian Clayson Booth. The older Booth died in 1927, when young Wayne was six years old. Booth graduated from American Fork High School in 1938. He was educated at
Brigham Young University
Brigham Young University (BYU, sometimes referred to colloquially as The Y) is a private research university in Provo, Utah. It was founded in 1875 by religious leader Brigham Young and is sponsored by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day ...
and the University of Chicago. He taught English at
Haverford College
Haverford College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Haverford, Pennsylvania. It was founded as a men's college in 1833 by members of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), began accepting non-Quakers in 1849, and became coeducational ...
and
Earlham College before moving back to the
University of Chicago
The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...
. He maintained his membership in the LDS Church throughout his life, but took the position that many religions were equally acceptable and sufficient. He was a member of both the
American Philosophical Society
The American Philosophical Society (APS), founded in 1743 in Philadelphia, is a scholarly organization that promotes knowledge in the sciences and humanities through research, professional meetings, publications, library resources, and communit ...
and the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences
The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (abbreviation: AAA&S) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and ...
.
''The Rhetoric of Fiction''
In what was likely Booth's most-recognized book, ''The Rhetoric of Fiction'', he argued that all
narrative
A narrative, story, or tale is any account of a series of related events or experiences, whether nonfictional (memoir, biography, news report, documentary, travel literature, travelogue, etc.) or fictional (fairy tale, fable, legend, thriller (ge ...
is a form of
rhetoric
Rhetoric () is the art of persuasion, which along with grammar and logic (or dialectic), is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. Rhetoric aims to study the techniques writers or speakers utilize to inform, persuade, or motivate parti ...
.
The book can be seen as his critique of those he viewed as mainstream critics. Booth argues that beginning roughly with
Henry James
Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...
, critics began to emphasize the difference between "showing" and "telling" in fiction and have placed more and more of a dogmatic premium on "showing."
Booth argued that despite the
realistic effects that modern authors have achieved, trying to distinguish narratives in this way is simplistic and deeply flawed, because authors invariably both show and tell. Booth observed that they appear to choose between the techniques based upon decisions about how to convey their various "commitments" along various "lines of interest," that is, rhetorical means of persuading the audience.
Booth's criticism can be viewed as distinct from traditional
biographical criticism
Biographical criticism is a form of literary criticism which analyzes a writer's biography to show the relationship between the author's life and their works of literature. Biographical criticism is often associated with historical-biographical c ...
(still practiced, especially among popular critics), the
new criticism
New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as ...
that argued that one can talk only about what the text says, and the
modern criticism that argues for the "eradication" of authorial presence. Booth claimed that it is impossible to talk about a text without talking about an author, because the existence of the text implies the existence of an author.
Booth argued not only that it does not matter whether an author—as distinct from the narrator—intrudes directly in a work, since readers will always infer the existence of an author behind any text they encounter, but also that readers always draw conclusions about the beliefs and judgments (and also, conclusions about the skills and "success") of a text's implied author, along the text's various lines of interest:
However impersonal he may try to be, his readers will inevitably construct a picture of the official scribe who writes in this manner -- and of course that official scribe will never be neutral toward all values. Our reaction to his various commitments, secret or overt, will help to determine our response to the work.
This
implied author (a widely used term that Booth coined in this book; whom he also called an author's "second self") is the one who "chooses, consciously or unconsciously, what we read; we infer him as an ideal, literary, created version of the real man; he is the sum of his own choices."
In ''The Rhetoric of Fiction'' Booth coined the term "
unreliable narrator
An unreliable narrator is a narrator whose credibility is compromised. They can be found in fiction and film, and range from children to mature characters. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in ''The Rhetoric of Fiction''. While unrel ...
".
Booth also spent several chapters—which include numerous references to and citations from widely recognized works of fiction—describing the various effects that implied authors achieve along the various lines of interest that he identifies, and the pitfalls they fall into, depending upon whether the implied author provides commentary, and upon the degree to which a story's narrator is reliable or unreliable, personal or impersonal.
Booth detailed three "Types of Literary Interest" that are "available for technical manipulation in fiction":
(1) Intellectual or cognitive: We have, or can be made to have, strong intellectual curiosity about "the facts," the true interpretation, the true reasons, the true origins, the true motives, or the truth about life itself. (2) Qualitative: We have, or can be made to have, a strong desire to see any pattern or form completed, or to experience a further development of qualities of any kind. We might call this kind "aesthetic," if to do so did not suggest that a literary form using this interest was necessarily of more artistic value than one based on other interests. (3) Practical: We have, or can be made to have, a strong desire for the success or failure of those we love or hate, admire or detest; or we can be made to hope for or fear a change in the quality of a character. We might call this kind "human," if to do so did not imply that 1 and 2 were somehow less than human.
In the 1983 edition of ''The Rhetoric of Fiction'', which included a lengthy addendum to the original 1961 edition, Booth outlined various identities taken on by both authors and readers: The Flesh-and Blood Author, the Implied Author, the Teller of This Tale, the Career Author, and the "Public Myth"; and, the Flesh-and-Blood Re-Creator of Many Stories, the Postulated Reader, the Credulous Listener, the Career Reader, and the Public Myth about the "Reading Public."
[''The Rhetoric of Fiction'', pp. 428-431.]
Other works
A later work is ''
Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent'', in which he addresses the question of what circumstances should cause one to change one's mind, discussing what happens in situations where two diametrically opposed systems of belief are in argument. His central example is an incident at the University of Chicago, when some students and administrators were engaged in fierce debate that eventually degenerated into each side simply reprinting the other side's arguments without comment, believing that the opposing side was so self-evidently absurd that to state its propositions was to refute them.
Another book of note is 1974's ''
A Rhetoric of Irony'', in which Booth examines the long tradition of irony and its use in literature. It is probably his second most popular work after ''
The Rhetoric of Fiction''.
In ''The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction'' (1992)'','' Booth returns to the topic of rhetorical effects in fiction, and "argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature" (cover note, ''The Company we Keep''). It is a widely-cited contribution to the field of literature and ethics or ethical criticism, building on his arguments in ''Critical Understanding'' (1979).
The University of Chicago Wayne C. Booth Graduate Student Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching was established in 1991 in honor of Booth. The award is given out annually.
Additionally, Booth House within the University of Chicago College Housing is named in honor of Booth.
Works
*The Rhetoric of Fiction (The University of Chicago Press, 1961, 1983)
*Boring from Within: The Art of the Freshman Essay (c. 1963) pamphlet
*Knowledge Most Worth Having (The University of Chicago Press, 1967) editor,
*Now Don't Try to Reason with Me: Essays and Ironies for a Credulous Age (The University of Chicago Press, 1970)
*Autobiography of Relva Booth Ross (1971)
*Booth Family History (1971)
*A Rhetoric of Irony (The University of Chicago Press, 1974)
*Modern Dogma & the Rhetoric of Assent (The University of Chicago Press, 1974) Ward-Phillips Lectures in English Language and Literature,
*Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism (The University of Chicago Press, 1979)
*The Harper and Row Rhetoric: Writing As Thinking, Thinking As Writing (1987) with
Marshall W. Gregory
*The Harper & Row Reader: Liberal Education Through Reading & Writing (1988) with Marshall W.Gregory
*The Vocation of a Teacher: Rhetorical Occasions, 1967-1988 (The University of Chicago Press, 1988)
*The Art of Deliberalizing: A Handbook for True Professionals (1990)
*The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (University of California Press, 1992, )
*The Art of Growing Older: Writers on Living and Aging (editor) (The University of Chicago Press, 1992, 1996)
*
The Craft of Research
''The Craft of Research'' is a book by Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, Joseph M. Williams, Joseph Bizup, and William T. Fitzgerald. The work is published by the University of Chicago Press. The book aims to provide a basic overview of how to r ...
(The University of Chicago Press, 1995, 2003, 2008) with
Gregory G. Colomb and
Joseph M. Williams Joseph M. Williams (18 August 1933, Cleveland, Ohio – 22 February 2008, South Haven, Michigan) was a professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at the University of Chicago where he promoted clarity in writing for many years. ...
*Literature as Exploration (1996) with
Louise Michelle Rosenblatt
*For the Love of It: Amateuring & Its Rivals (The University of Chicago Press, 1999)
*Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication (2004) Blackwell Manifesto
*My Many Selves: The Quest for a Plausible Harmony (Utah State University Press, 2006)
*The Essential Wayne Booth (The University of Chicago Press, 2006) edited by Walter Jost,
*The Knowing Most Worth Doing (The University of Virginia Press, 2010) edited by Walter Jost
Notes
External links
NYTimes: Wayne C. Booth, Critic Who Analyzed Rhetoric, Dies at 84Wayne Booth, Professor Emeritus of English, 1921-2005by The University of Chicago Press
{{DEFAULTSORT:Booth, Wayne
1921 births
2005 deaths
American literary critics
Rhetoric theorists
Irony theorists
Brigham Young University alumni
University of Chicago alumni
University of Chicago faculty
Earlham College faculty
Former Latter Day Saints
People from American Fork, Utah
Members of the American Philosophical Society
Presidents of the Modern Language Association