The Company We Keep by Wayne C. Booth
An Ethics of Fiction
This work argues that fiction is not merely entertainment but a formative moral force, exploring how authors, narrators, and characters shape readers’ ethical understanding and habits of judgment. It examines the techniques by which narratives invite sympathy or critique—such as voice, irony, and characterization—and warns against both heavy-handed didacticism and irresponsible ambiguity. Emphasizing reciprocity between writer and reader, the book advocates an ethic of attentive, imaginative reading that recognizes literature’s power to make strangers intelligible and to cultivate moral perception without reducing art to moralizing instruction.
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- Published
- 1988
- Nationality
- American
- Length
- Unknown
- Pages
- Unknown
- Original Language
- English
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