Rhetoric of Fiction

The Rhetoric of Fiction Outline
I. The author begins by pointing out that one of the obvious artificial devices has a method of going to the action and figure out what the writer meant. A. Throughout life, humans do not know the other person without reliable internal signs from a point of view. B. Points of view are always in books such as the Bible, using the word “he”. C. The next minor point below the major point
II. The author insists that attitudes can change the voice of the reader and create moods. A. Moods tend to let the reader know what foreshadows the next few pages. B. The author’s voice in fiction raise problems that go far deeper than this simplified version of point of view. 1. He alludes to Percy Lubbock in this regard who argued that the art of fiction does not begin until the novelist thinks of his story as a matter to be shown 2. It depends on the point of view, and the style used.
III. Wayne Booth examines some of the more important arguments for authorial objectivity, the ability of an author to keep his opinions and preachments out of a short story, a novel, or any other literary work that he writes. A. The author’s voice and tone changes the opinion of the story. B. The author would erase all direct addresses to the reader. 1. One must recognize the radical inadequacy of the telling-showing distinction in dealing with the practice of different authors. 2. Authors and their ability to order various forms of telling in the service of various forms of showing the author’s form of writing. 3. Each shift from the perspective of one character to another is a reminder of the “author’s presence”.
IV. The author insists that the act of narration as performed by even the most highly dramatized narrator is itself the author’s presentation of an ‘inside view’ of a character. A. The author sometimes meddle with the natural sequence, proportion, or duration of an event. B. Though the author can choose his disguises, he can never choose to disappear. 1. He chooses to tell the tale of Odysseus rather than that of Circe or Polyphemus. 2. He chooses to tell the cheerful tale of Monna and Federigo rather than a pathetic account of Monna’s husband and son.
V. Booth criticized the rhetoric relations decided by an author. A. As dramatists have always known, even the purest of dramas is not purely dramatic in the sense of being entirely presented, entirely shown as taking place in the moment. 1. Dramatists have relations to take care of, such as what parts should be shown, which should be disregarded. 2. Ever speech, every gesture narrates; most works contain disguised narrators who are used to tell the audience what it needs to know. B. Undramatized narrators are when the story is not as dramatic as dramatists’ stories. 1. Most tales are presented as passing through the consciousness of a teller. Even in drama, much of what we are given is narrated by someone. 2. We are often as much interested in the effect on the narrator’s own mind and heart.
VI. For the reader who becomes too much aware of the author’s claim to superlative virtues, the effect may fail. A. The reader with his mind on the main business, however, the narrator becomes a rich and provocative chorus. B. Stage setting, explanation of the meaning of an action, summary of thought process or of events too insignificant to merit being dramatized. C. The novelist could step forward and explain the restlessness of the appearance of the man’s thought. D. Transformed information ceases to be useful even in characterization of minds, unless the author retains some method of showing what the facts are, from which the speaker’s interpretations characteristically diverge.