Buy New

$36.95

FREE Shipping.

Only 3 left in stock (more on the way).

Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Want it Tuesday, Aug. 16? Order within and choose this date at checkout.

Ship to:

Select a shipping address:

Buy Used

$11.91

FREE Shipping on orders over $25.

Used: Good | Details

Sold by Sitanion

Fulfilled by Amazon

Turn on 1-Click ordering for this browser

Have one to sell? Sell on Amazon

Flip to back Flip to front

Listen Playing... Paused You're listening to a sample of the Audible audio edition.
Learn more

See all 2 images

The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction Paperback – December 15, 1989

by Wayne C. Booth (Author)

1 customer review

See all 6 formats and editions Hide other formats and editions

Price

New from

Used from

Hardcover

"Please retry"

—

$60.75

$5.24

Paperback

"Please retry"

$36.95

$19.00

$0.01

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 conversation about many kinds of personal and social goods that fictions can serve or destroy. While not ignoring the consequences for conduct of engaging with powerful stories, it will attend to that more immediate topic, What happens to us as we read? Who am I, during the hours of reading or listening? What is the quality of the life I lead in the company of these would-be friends?

Through a wide variety of periods and genres and scores of particular works, Booth pursues various metaphors for such engagements: "friendship with books," "the exchange of gifts," "the colonizing of worlds," "the constitution of commonwealths." He concludes with extended explorations of the ethical powers and potential dangers of works by Rabelais, D. H. Lawrence, Jane Austen, and Mark Twain.

The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction

$36.95 FREE Shipping. Only 3 left in stock (more on the way). Ships from and sold by Amazon.com. Gift-wrap available.

Frequently Bought Together

Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought

Page 1 of 1 Start overPage 1 of 1

This shopping feature will continue to load items. In order to navigate out of this carousel please use your heading shortcut key to navigate to the next or previous heading.

Wayne C. Booth

13

Paperback
$29.00
Martha C. Nussbaum

4

Paperback
$20.20
Stephen George

1

Paperback
$39.20
Albert Camus

167

Paperback
$10.44
J. M. Coetzee

76

Paperback
$14.68
Martha C. Nussbaum

6

Paperback
$36.71

NO_CONTENT_IN_FEATURE

Product Details

Paperback: 580 pages
Publisher: University of California Press; Reprint edition (December 15, 1989)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0520062108
ISBN-13: 978-0520062108
Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.3 x 9 inches
Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #612,651 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #896 in Books > Business & Money > Business Culture > Ethics
- #2666 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Philosophy > Ethics & Morality
- #5097 in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Criticism & Theory

Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?

Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars

5 star		0%
4 star		100%
3 star		0%
2 star		0%
1 star		0%

See the customer review

Share your thoughts with other customers

Write a customer review

Top Customer Reviews

required reading for anyone who cares about literature

By bookloversfriend on December 24, 2004

Format: Paperback

In his usual thorough, encyclopedic way, Booth discusses many of the issues concerning the effects of fiction in the real world on real people. And as usual, he bends over backward to be fair to everybody. He gives patient, exhaustive treatments of all arguments and claims, even the most idiotic, showing their inadequacies. But people who put forth idiotic arguments do not do so because they are stupid but because they are committed, and committed people do not respond to reason, however patient and thorough. Still, there is much thought-provoking material here, and the book should be read by all readers interested in the personal and social effects of literature. Booth is weakest when dealing with philosophical issues (because he is not a philosopher). His confusions about subjectivism and relativism are cases in point. For a competent discussion of these and the other ethical (i.e. value-theoretic) issues, readers would be better advised to get A Book Worth Reading. But as a compendium of arguments "clearing away the dead wood" and for his many thought-provoking discussions, Booth is impossible to beat.

Comment 18 people found this helpful. Was this review helpful to you? Yes No Sending feedback...

Thank you for your feedback.

Sorry, we failed to record your vote. Please try again

Report abuse

See the customer review

Write a customer review

Set up an Amazon Giveaway

Amazon Giveaway allows you to run promotional giveaways in order to create buzz, reward your audience, and attract new followers and customers. Learn more about Amazon Giveaway

This item: The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction

Set up a giveaway