Booth
Direct and authoritative rhetoric --if the story is presented without comment, it leaves the reader without guidance if explicit evaluation-- author's voice in fiction- what happens when an author engages a reader fully with a work of fiction
Economical method of imposing virtues on the reader is to tell, supporting the telling with episodes by 1- going behind to reveal true workings of the characters mind and heart or 2- overt action ; but space and unruly episodes can be avoided with narratorial help or direct statements
A tale is manipulated in such a way as to make the reader desire an effect
There is a radical inadequacy of the telling-showing distinction-artistry lies not in adherence tj any one supreme manner of narration but in an author's ability to order various forms of telling in the service of various fonts of showing 17
Even without the author's voice and an attempt to tell a story objectively, what we have left is artificial: everything he shows will serve to tell; the authors's judgment is always present, always evident to anyone who knows how yo look for it.
Whether its particular forms are harmful or serviceable is always a complex question
Dialectical opposition be between artful showing and in artistic , merely rhetorical telling
Basis for judging fiction 37--do justice to reality, be true to life, to be natural or real or intensely alive; if we look at technique as rhetoric., we can see what an author is willing to do to meet one or more if the. criteria
The accurate transcription of actuality does not be easily produce a work if any real truth-41
James says human life ... Is before all things a spectacle, an occupation and entertainment for the eyes.what our eyes show us is all that we are sure if ; so with thus we will at any rate begin"
James-- time must be foreshortened to achieve intensity, but in foreshortening the novelist must use dissimulation successfully I. Order to preserve the illusion if reality-- a general rhetoric in the service if realism rather than a particular rhetoric for the mist intense experience if distinctive effects
Reader pulls together whatever the novelist presents, scene, gesture, dramatized comment , omniscient judgement into a single synthesis-- but an no point do I pretend that I am not reading a novel- 53
With informational text, we do tens to overlook the writer, especially when no author is given inthe text boon
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