Wayne C. Booth (born 1921) is an American literary critic. He is a Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Chicago. His work followed largely from the Chicago school of literary criticism.

His major work is The Rhetoric of Fiction . In this book, Booth argues that all narrative is a form of rhetoric. The speaker, in the case of narrative, is the author, or, more specifically, Booth's concept of the implied author .

The implied author is a compromise between old-fashioned biographical criticism, and the new critics who argued that one can only talk about what the text says. Booth argued that it is impossible to talk about a text without talking about an author, because the existence of the text already implies the existence of an author. Booth recognizes, however, that it may be that this author differs from the actual author.

Booth also notes, however, that this author is distinct from the narrator of the text. He uses the examples of stories with an unreliable narrator to prove this point, observing that, in these stories, the whole point of the story is lost if one confuses narrator and author.

A later work is Modern Dogma and the Rhetoric of Assent , in which he addresses the question of what circumstances should cause one to change one's mind, discussing what happens in situations where two diametrically opposed systems of belief are in argument. His central example is an incident at the University of Chicago, in which students and administration were engaged in fierce argument that eventually degenerated to each side simply reprinting the other side's arguments without comment, believing that they were so self-evidently absurd as to undermine themselves.

He also wrote , a sequel of sorts to The Rhetoric of Fiction, in which he makes a case for ethical judgments made on a work of fiction.

In common with most 'Chicago School' critics, Booth is attackeded for making overly-broad claims about the nature of humanity; and for marginalizing cultures in the process.

Works

• Rhetoric of Fiction (1961)
• Boring from Within: The Art of the Freshman Essay (c. 1963) pamphlet
• Now Don't Try to Reason with Me : Essays and Ironies for a Credulous Age (1970)
• Autobiography of Relva Booth Ross (1971)
• Booth Family History (1971)
• A Rhetoric of Irony (1974)
• Knowledge Most Worth Having (1974) editor
• Modern Dogma & the Rhetoric of Assent (1974) Ward-Phillips Lectures in English Language and Literature
• Critical Understanding : The Powers and Limits of Pluralism (1979)
• The Harper and Row Rhetoric: Writing As Thinking, Thinking As Writing (1987) with Marshall W.Gregory
• The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (1988)
• The Harper & Row Reader : Liberal Education Through Reading & Writing (1988) with Marshall W.Gregory
• The Vocation of a Teacher : Rhetorical Occasions, 1967-1988 (1988)
• The Art of Deliberalizing: A Handbook for True Professionals (1990)
• The Art of Growing Older: Writers on Living and Aging (1992) editor
• The Craft of Research (1995) with Gregory Colomb and Joseph Williams
• Literature as Exploration (1996) with Louise M. Rosenblatt
• For the Love of It : Amateuring & Its Rivals (1999)
• Rhetoric of Rhetoric: The Quest for Effective Communication (2004) Blackwell Manifesto