A. C. Purves

Critical Thinking

Arts & Literature

“This brief volume, written for British undergraduates to suggest ways by which they might better read poetry, novels, and plays, is an exceedingly useful book, for other English-speaking students of literature as well. The author assumes that the careful reader looks for anomalies in the text, for patterns, comparisons, connections, inconsistencies, and omissions (each of these is the subject of a chapter). To illustrate how the reader might look for these features and then use them to interpret the text, Manlove uses examples mainly from English literature but also from American. The texts are varied and well-chosen and the analyses straightforward. The author does not display his erudition but seeks to guide the novice reader. This is an excellent book for the beginning and even the advanced student of literature, and should become a staple of undergraduate libraries.”