Thinking Through Style

Reviews / Votes

impressive ... artfully remind[s] us that prose is the principle medium of thinking and of getting along in the world, and that literary criticism therefore matters not as a dilettantish pastime but as a model for how to handle the prose of the world without being bullied or commodified by it. * Jonathan Farina, Victorian Studies * Thinking through Style amounts to a thoughtfully stylish demonstration of the at once serious and pleasurable insights to be gained from a close attention to how style both "simulates" and "stimulates" thought. Whatever it is that we do when we think "through" style, the collection compellingly shows that in prose as in thinking, il ny a pas de hors style. * Yasmin Solomonescu, Modern Philology * Overall, this broad collection reminds us ... of the intellectual weight of the nineteenth century, and at its best it articulates its innovative point that, in Stevenson's words, 'style is the essence of thinking'. * David Greenham, Modern Language Review * Conclusively, if not explicitly, the volume makes the case for the virtues and value of a stylish criticism. Thinking through Style represents English literary criticism at its best and acts as a salutary reminder of why we choose to do it. * Uttara Natarajan, Review of English Studies * Thinking through Style is to be welcomed for its demonstration of the centrality and amplitude of style as a critical concern. It furnishes an advanced and eloquent education in the kinds of thinking and attention involved in a literary study of prose. * Andrew Hodgson, BARS * making a wonderful case not only for twenty prose stylists of the long nineteenth century, from Coleridge to T.S. Eliot, but also for the close analysis of prose more generally, as an illuminating and suggestive field of study. * Hazlitt Review *