Course epitome

Wayne Booth is one of the most consistently interesting, but also one of the most consistently underestimated, critics of the latter 20th C. While the majority of his work concerns literature, rather than more obviously purposeful texts (speeches, debates, posters, commercials), he is as deeply rhetorical as Aristotle or Cicero or Burke. His driving theme is the rhetorical resources that encourage, obstruct, or refine agreement: and, therefore, belief, knowledge, and action. We will read a range of his books, engage his issues, and seek agreement about the value of his critical pluralism, not only for understanding texts, but also for understanding each other.

Required texts

Wayne C. Booth. 1974. Modern dogma and the rhetoric of assent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; ISBN 0-226-06572-3.

Wayne C. Booth. 1983. The rhetoric of fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; ISBN 0-226-06558-8.

Wayne C. Booth. 2006. The essential Wayne Booth. Edited by Walter Jost. Chicago: University of Chicago Press; ISBN: 978-0-226-06592-2.

On reserve

Frederick Antczak, ed. 1995. Rhetoric and pluralism: legacies of Wayne Booth. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press.

Wayne C. Booth. 1970. Now don't try to reason with me: essays and ironies for a credulous age. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wayne C. Booth. 1974. A rhetoric of irony. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wayne C. Booth. 1974. Modern dogma and the rhetoric of assent. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wayne C. Booth. 1979. Critical understanding: the power and limits of pluralism. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wayne C. Booth. 1983. The rhetoric of fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Wayne C. Booth. 1988. The vocation of a teacher: rhetorical occasions, 1967-1988. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Wayne C. Booth. 1989. The company we keep: an ethics of fiction. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.

Wayne C. Booth. 2004. The rhetoric of rhetoric: the quest for effective communication. Malden, MA:Blackwell Publishing.

Wayne C. Booth. 2006. The essential Wayne Booth. Edited by Walter Jost. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Gregory C. Clark. 2000. "Wayne Booth." Twentieth-century rhetorics and rhetoricians: critical studies and sources. Michael G. Moran and Michelle Ballif, eds. Westport, CN: Greenwood Press, 49-51.

James Phelan. 1988. "Wayne C. Booth." Dictionary of literary biography 67, Modern American critics since 1955. Gregory S. Jay, ed. Detroit: Gale Research, 49-66.

Requirements (details here)

Essay (6 August)				40%
Course participation	Presentation	Presentation	25%	60%
		Mutual assessment	15%
	Class discussion		20%

 

Links (suggestions welcome)

Old Harry mp3 download

Wayne Booth Site

Booth's 1987 Ryerson lecture

Emory Report Interview

Booth-Lewontin exchange

Modern dogma notes