25 pages • 50 minutes read
Virginia WoolfHow Should One Read a Book?
Nonfiction | Essay / Speech | Adult | Published in 1926A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Literary Devices
Literary references
Literary references are used throughout the essay, and this intellectual information forms part of the essay’s educational design. Some of these require background knowledge to fully understand, showing that Woolf assumes a certain level of literary knowledge and interest from her “common reader.” These allusions, including names like Tolstoi (Tolstoy), Shakespeare, and Keats, give a common reader a brief and broad overview of the literary canon. Woolf’s references create a framework for her more detailed literary criticism. In her more in-depth analyses of Austen, for example, Woolf spells out exactly how Austen approaches a scene, what she cares about as opposed to other authors, and even mentions some potential criticisms of her writing style. Woolf does not ask the reader to simply trust her expertise on the matter. By referencing relevant authors, works, and characters, she appeals to the trust of readers and demonstrates her own experience and knowledge of literature.
Imagery
Imagery is the use of words to invoke the other five senses. In the first paragraph, Woolf quite literally asks her reader to imagine that they are in the room with her. She goes on to mention sights, sounds, and feelings that help the reader join her. Later, when she compares genres of books to species of animals, she continues the metaphor by invoking the texture of an animal’s fur or lack thereof. In describing the experience of reading, she describes a person skipping, sauntering, lounging, and loafing through the book.
Woolf’s use of imagery is vital in her efforts to conceptualize such abstract ideas. Instead of describing reading as a lonely, stationary task, she describes this non-visual world with such detail.
Parallelism
Parallelism is the use of corresponding grammatical construction in successive phrases or sentences. For example, in her first paragraph, Woolf attempts to describe the breadth of types of books and reasons to buy them, using parallelism several times. She says that books are “bought for purposes of research, bought to amuse a railway journey, bought by miscellaneous beings” (1), and she goes on to use parallelism in subsequent phrases. This exemplifies her use of parallelism in this essay because she tends to use it in communicating the far-reaching nature of books and their audience. Parallelism gives her a connected way to list people or occasions or reasons related to her topic.
Rhetorical Question
A rhetorical question is a question asked to make a point, not to receive an answer. The title of the essay is a rhetorical question and Woolf continues to use the device throughout the essay. She spells out the purpose of her first question, which is that the essay is not meant to be an answer but an exploration of the question. Rather than an author providing their reader with answers, Woolf’s use of rhetorical questions set her on the same level as her reader. Before the reader can consider deeply, the writer herself has provided the logical next question. The effect of this strategy is to establish the author as someone with the reader’s best interest at heart. By asking the questions that she imagines are already on the mind of the reader, she positions herself as a guide rather than an omniscient author providing the answers.
Related Titles
By Virginia Woolf
