Wayne Booth

Wayne Clayson Booth (February 22, 1921 in American Fork, Utah, – October 10, 2005 in Chicago, Illinois) was an American literary critic. He was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English Language & Literature and the College at the University of Chicago. His work followed largely from the Chicago school of literary criticism.

Born in Utah of Mormon parents, Booth was educated at Brigham Young University and the University of Chicago. He taught English at Haverford College and Earlham College before moving back to the University of Chicago. He maintained his membership in the LDS Church throughout his life, but took the position that many religions were equally acceptable and sufficient.

In what was likely Booth's most-recognized book, The Rhetoric of Fiction, he argued that all narrative is a form of rhetoric.

The book can be seen as his critique of those he viewed as mainstream critics. Booth argues that beginning roughly with Henry James, critics began to emphasize the difference between "showing" and "telling" in fiction and have placed more and more of a dogmatic premium on "showing."

Booth argued that despite the realistic effects that modern authors have achieved, trying to distinguish narratives in this way is simplistic and deeply flawed, because authors invariably both show and tell. Booth observed that they appear to choose between the techniques based upon decisions about how to convey their various "commitments" along various "lines of interest."

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