Perhaps no other critical label has been made to cover more ground than "irony," and in our time irony has come to have so many meanings that by itself it means almost nothing. In this work, Wayne C. Booth cuts through the resulting confusions by analyzing how we manage to share quite specific ironies and why we often fail when we try to do so. How does a reader or listener recognize the kind of statement which requires him to reject its "clear" and "obvious" meaning? And how does any reader know where to stop, once he has embarked on the hazardous and exhilarating path of rejecting "what the...
Perhaps no other critical label has been made to cover more ground than "irony," and in our time irony has come to have so many meanings that by itsel...
When should I change my mind? What can I believe and what must I doubt? In this new "philosophy of good reasons" Wayne C. Booth exposes five dogmas of modernism that have too often inhibited efforts to answer these questions. Modern dogmas teach that "you cannot reason about values" and that "the job of thought is to doubt whatever can be doubted," and they leave those who accept them crippled in their efforts to think and talk together about whatever concerns them most. They have willed upon us a "befouled rhetorical climate" in which people are driven to two self-destructive extremes...
When should I change my mind? What can I believe and what must I doubt? In this new "philosophy of good reasons" Wayne C. Booth exposes five dogmas of...
"The Knowledge Most Worth Having "represents the essence of education at the University of Chicago faculty and students grappling with key intellectual questions that span the humanities, while still acknowledging the need to acquire a depth of knowledge in one s chosen field. The papers collected here were delivered during an often-heated conference at the university in 1966, and include contributions from such scholars as Northrop Frye, Richard McKeon, and, of course, the dean of the college, Wayne Booth himself. Taken as a whole, they present a passionate defense of liberal education, one...
"The Knowledge Most Worth Having "represents the essence of education at the University of Chicago faculty and students grappling with key intellectua...
In this entertaining collection of essays, Wayne Booth looks for the much-maligned middle ground for reason a rhetoric that can unite truths of the heart with truths of the head and allow us all to discover shared convictions in mutual inquiry. First delivered as lectures in the 1960s, when Booth was a professor at Earlham College and the University of Chicago, "Now Don t Try to Reason with Me "still resounds with anyone struggling for consensus in a world of us versus them. Professor Booth s earnestness is graced by wit, irony, and generous humor. Louis Coxe, "New Republic ""
In this entertaining collection of essays, Wayne Booth looks for the much-maligned middle ground for reason a rhetoric that can unite truths of the he...
This critically acclaimed collection is both a passionate celebration of teaching as a vocation and an argument for rhetoric as the center of liberal education. While Booth provides an eloquent personal account of the pleasures of teaching, he also vigorously exposes the political and economic scandals that frustrate even the most dedicated educators. " Booth] is unusually adept at addressing a wide variety of audiences. From deep in the heart of this academic jungle, he shows a clear eye and a firm step." Alison Friesinger Hill, "New York Times ""Book Review" "A cause for...
This critically acclaimed collection is both a passionate celebration of teaching as a vocation and an argument for rhetoric as the center of liberal ...
In The Company We Keep, Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. But the questions he asks are not confined to morality. Returning ethics to its root sense, Booth proposes that the ethical critic will be interested in any effect on the ethos, the total character or quality of tellers and listeners. Ethical criticism will risk talking about the quality of this particular encounter with this particular work. Yet it will give up the old hope for definitive judgments of "good" work and "bad." Rather it will be a...
In The Company We Keep, Wayne C. Booth argues for the relocation of ethics to the center of our engagement with literature. But the questio...
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century until his death in 2005, Wayne Booth was one of the most influential literary critics in America and beyond, known worldwide for The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), and hailed as a progressive advocate for rethinking the concept of liberal education in a changing world. His many books and essays remain classic reading for those who wish to understand how fiction communicates ethically, why good ethical criticism as such is a signature human activity to be cherished, and how the human desire to know helps to define who we are,...
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century until his death in 2005, Wayne Booth was one of the most influential literary critics in Americ...
