Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction and China's Critical Context

Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction and China's Critical Context Dan Shen Wayne C. Booth's rhetorical narrative theory has not only enjoyed great influence on narrative studies in North America but it has also exerted a wide-scale and profound impact in the most populous country on the other side of the globe. Of the long list of Booth's publications, The Rhetoric of Fiction has been the most influential in China, currently existing in two Chinese translations, and having been embraced and applied by a large number of Chinese scholars. The warm reception of this book and the significant role it has played in China are very much a consequence of the peculiar Chinese critical context. This essay will start with a discussion of this Eastern context, then go on to explore the functioning in this context of three specific concepts or aspects of Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction: (1) the implied author, (2) (un)reliability, and (3) narrative distance. Opposite Movement: From Political to Formal Modern and contemporary Western literary theories began entering China on a large scale around 1980. Prior to that, the field of literary studies in China had for decades seen the domination of political and sociological criticism, which reached the ultra-'Left' extreme during the Cultural Revolution (1966 to 1976). In that period, literary theory and criticism were treated only as political tools for class struggle, and formal(ist) and aesthetic studies were largely excluded from the scene (see Shen "The Future"). After the end of the Cultural Revolution, China adopted a policy [End Page 167] of economic reform, opening the country up to the outside world. Alongside the flow of Western capital and commodities came the principles and procedures of various schools of Western literary theory and criticism. All these schools, whether fashionable (such as feminism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis) or out of fashion (such as New Criticism, the Chicago school, structuralist narratology) in the West, were invariably new and contemporary to Chinese scholars (see Shen and Zhou). But the change in China's political climate established a reverse hierarchy among critical schools around 1980. Political (and other kinds of extrinsic) criticism was devalued, and formal (or intrinsic) criticism became the norm. That is to say, the trend of development in China and in the West went in two opposite directions around 1980. When scholars in the West moved away from long-term formalist criticism towards sociohistorical and political concerns, many Chinese scholars moved away from long-term political and sociological criticism towards formal and aesthetic studies, which paradoxically gave them a veritable sense of liberation and freedom. This revived interest in formal and aesthetic studies established a congenial context for the reception of Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction. In general, Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction has had great appeal for Chinese scholars for the following reasons: (1) Western literary theories in the twentieth century characteristically originated from Europe, but the Americans Henry James and Wayne C. Booth came up with epoch-making original theories that have enjoyed world-wide influence. (2) Booth's The Rhetoric of Fiction is a milestone in twentieth-century Western aesthetics of fiction, and it laid the foundation for contemporary American theories of fiction. (3) The Rhetoric of Fiction offers a very useful and wide-ranging discussion of fictional narrative techniques, and it is therefore a book of high practical value. If in the West The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the study of literature with a combination of technical and ethical analysis as a reaction against purely formalist criticism, it has played a significant role in transforming literary studies in China mainly through its attention to the techniques of fiction. Before the end of the Cultural Revolution, the literary field in China was marked by dogmatic and stereotyped political criticism, treating literary texts as social documents, lacking subtlety and aesthetic/technical attention. When the trend switched from the political to the formal around 1980, there was a great need for innovative and invigorating...