Wayne Booth:Literary Theory Research Under The Rhetorical Perspective

Wayne Clayson Booth was one of the most influential American literary critics in the 20 th century. Having researched on his works, it was clearly that he focusing on literary theory under the perspective of rhetoric. And among all his works, Booth expressed some sort of very strong ethical concerns and very profound thinking of pluralism. So this paper tries to study from the perspectives of the rhetoric of fiction, the ethics of fiction and pluralism.The paper is divided into five chapters. Chapter one is set to briefly introduce Wayne Booth and his works, especially focus on the research summary of Booth’s theory.Chapter two is arranged to examine the academic background of Booth. Booth was born in a Mormon family, and served as a Mormon missionary during his early days, which has great influence on his preference of distributing moral concepts. However, after he entered the University of Chicago, the Chicago School was mainly emphasized formalism. But the Chicago critics were also adopted pluralistic and rhetoric strategies so that Booth was able to practice his rhetoric criticism. Besides, theories of Aristotle and Kenneth Burke also inspired Booth creatively, leading him to search for theory of fictions based on rhetoric.Chapter three of the paper is designed to analysis Booth’s representative work “The Rhetoric of Fiction”, try to make explicit the complicated process of communication in fiction which both the author and reader take important parts. Booth objected to the realistic literary writing that tries to hide authors’ voice and pay no attention to readers’ response. He believed that author could and should choose his rhetorical strategy to influence reader instead of disappearing from the text. So far as he was concerned, fiction was a peculiar rhetoric which was helpful to improve communication in the hope of pursuing common value. Booth studied “implied author”, “reliable/unreliable narrator” and “distance control” to show how can/cannot authors help readers to remake sense of the textual meaning.Chapter four sees Booth’s ethical criticism. The relationship between authors and readers is metaphorically described as a friendship, which leads to the transformation of ethical criticism to evaluating the experiences of reading. Booth brought up an original mode of conduction which involved in other readers’ judgments. His ethical criticism on the one hand stick to the inner power of texts, emphasize the authoritative superiority of the author; on the other hand largely support critical pluralism.Chapter five is focus on Booth’s methodological pluralism. It is limited by an important understanding which Booth defined as the goal, process, and result of a successful communication. The ultimate purpose of his pluralism is to promote understanding and to build a harmonious community. So the methodological pluralism is some sort of “meta-criticism”, which could be applied to all criticisms. Booth’s pluralism is based on the study of R.S.Crane, Kenneth Burke and M.H.Abrams, but his pluralism is a rhetorical one, so he called it as “rhetorology”. And as a positive educational reformer, Booth committed to expand General Education under the guiding of rhetorology.