What is a Good Book?


UNDERSTANDING THE TEXT

1. What, according to Ruskin, are the limitations of the good book

of the hour?

Answer:


2. What are the criteria that Ruskin feels that readers should fulfil

to make themselves fit for the company of the Dead.

Answer:


3. Why does Ruskin feel that reading the work of a good author is

a painstaking task?

Answer:


4. What is the emphasis placed by Ruskin on accuracy?

Answer:


TALKING ABOUT THE TEXT

Discuss in pairs

1. Ruskin’s insistence on looking intensely at words, and assuring

oneself of meaning, syllable by syllable—nay, letter by letter.

Answer:


2. Choice of diction is very crucial to the communication of

meaning.

Answer:


APPRECIATION

1. The text is an excerpt from Sesame and Lilies which consists of

two essays, primarily, written for delivery as public lectures in

1864. Identify the features that fit the speech mode. Notice the

sentence patterns.


2. The lecture was delivered in 1864. What are the shifts in style

and diction that make the language different from the way it is

used today?


LANGUAGE WORK

1. Many sentences and paragraphs in the excerpt begin with the

word ‘And’. To what extent does this contribute to the rhetorical

style of the lecture?


2. Study each of the following sentences and notice the balance

between its parts. Pick out other sentences in the text that reflect

this kind of balance

a. It is right that a false Latin quantity should excite a smile

in the House of Commons; but it is wrong that a false English

meaning should not excite a frown there.

b. Let the accent of words be watched, by all means, but let

the meaning be watched more closely still, and fewer will do

the work.


SUGGESTED READING

1. Sesame and Lilies by John Ruskin


2. Seven Lamps of Architecture by John Ruskin


DABP006705