The Rhetoric of Fiction Author:Wayne C Booth from the preface: — In writing about the rhetoric of fiction, I am not particularly interested in didactic fiction, fiction used for propganda or instruction. My subject is the technique of non-didactic fiction, viewed as the art of cummunicating with readers-- the rhetorical resources available to the writer of epic, novel, or short story as he ... more »tries, consciously or unconsciously, to impose his fictional world upon the reader. ... Is there any defense that can be offered, on aesthetic grounds, for an art full of rhetorical appeals? What kind of art is it that will allow Flaubert to barge into his action to describe Emma as "unaware that now she was eager to hield to the very thing that had made her so indignant," and as "totally unconscious that she was prostituting herself?" Whatever their answers, critics have often been troubled by this kind of overt, distinguishble rhetoric. But it takes no very deep analysis to show that the same problems are raised, though in less obvious form, by the disguised rhetoric of modern fiction; when Henry James says that he has invented a ficelle because the reader, not the hero, needs a "friend," the ostensibly dramatic move is still rhetorical; it is dictated by the effort to help the reader grasp the work...« less