The Rhetoric of Fiction by Booth, Wayne C. -- Read -- Imperial Library of Trantor

Index

Copyright Title Page Dedication Contents Foreword to the Second Edition Preface to the First Edition Acknowledgments Epigraph Part I: Artistic Purity and the Rhetoric of Fiction

I. Telling and Showing

Authoritative “Telling” in Early Narration Two Stories from the Decameron The Author’s Many Voices

II. General Rules, I: “True Novels Must Be Realistic”

From Justified Revolt to Crippling Dogma From Differentiated Kinds to Universal Qualities General Criteria in Earlier Periods Three Sources of General Criteria: The Work, the Author, the Reader Intensity of Realistic Illusion The Novel as Unmediated Reality On Discriminating among Realisms The Ordering of Intensities

III. General Rules, II: “All Authors Should Be Objective”

Neutrality and the Author’s “Second Self” Impartiality and “Unfair” Emphasis Impassibilité Subjectivism Encouraged by Impersonal Techniques

IV. General Rules, III: “True Art Ignores the Audience”

“True Artists Write Only for Themselves” Theories of Pure Art The “Impurity” of Great Literature Is a Pure Fiction Theoretically Desirable?

V. General Rules, IV: Emotions, Beliefs, and the Reader’s Objectivity

“Tears and Laughter Are, Aesthetically, Frauds” Types of Literary Interest (and Distance) Combinations and Conflicts of Interests The Role of Belief Belief Illustrated: The Old Wives’ Tale

VI. Types of Narration

Person Dramatized and Undramatized Narrators Observers and Narrator-Agents Scene and Summary Commentary Self-Conscious Narrators Variations of Distance Variations in Support or Correction Privilege Inside Views

Part II: The Author’s Voice in Fiction

VII. The Uses of Reliable Commentary

Providing the Facts, Picture, or Summary Molding Beliefs Relating Particulars to the Established Norms Heightening the Significance of Events Generalizing the Significance of the Whole Work Manipulating Mood Commenting Directly on the Work Itself

VIII. Telling as Showing: Dramatized Narrators, Reliable and Unreliable

Reliable Narrators as Dramatized Spokesmen for the Implied Author “Fielding” in Tom Jones Imitators of Fielding Tristram Shandy and the Problem of Formal Coherence Three Formal Traditions: Comic Novel, Collection, and Satire The Unity of Tristram Shandy Shandean Commentary, Good and Bad

IX. Control of Distance in Jane Austen’s Emma

Sympathy and Judgment in Emma Sympathy through Control of Inside Views Control of Judgment The Reliable Narrator and the Norms of Emma Explicit Judgments on Emma Woodhouse The Implied Author as Friend and Guide

Part III: Impersonal Narration

X. The Uses of Authorial Silence

“Exit Author” Once Again Control of Sympathy Control of Clarity and Confusion “Secret Communion” between Author and Reader

XI. The Price of Impersonal Narration, I: Confusion of Distance

The Turn of the Screw as Puzzle Troubles with Irony in Earlier Literature The Problem of Distance in A Portrait of the Artist

XII. The Price of Impersonal Narration, II: Henry James and the Unreliable Narrator

XIII. The Morality of Impersonal Narration

Morality and Technique The Seductive Point of View: Céline as Example The Author’s Moral Judgment Obscured The Morality of Elitism

Afterword to the Second Edition: The Rhetoric in Fiction and Fiction as Rhetoric: Twenty-One Years Later Notes Bibliography Supplementary Bibliography, 1961–82, by James Phelan Index to the First Edition Index to the Bibliographies