I think that Nabokov’s tone is didactic and matter-of-fact. The author is educating and instructing the reader on how to be good readers and good writers and giving them a series of rules to follow and clever tips on how to prepare to read and write. He educates and is teaching us how to become better readers and what skills we need to harness to be good writers also. Nabokov is also matter-of-fact in his tone, and is not emotional and is to the point.
As Nabokov writes, you find that his sole purpose in giving this lecture is to instruct others on how they can be better and more efficient when reading and writing. He tests the audience, asks them questions. He tries to see what their opinion is and then corrects them in their false beliefs. You can directly see his strong instruction in paragraphs 8 and 9. In paragraph 8 he gives a series of questions, and in 9 he gives the answer. He first asks the audience what qualities and items a reader needs to be effective and then gives them the answer, saying, “the good reader is one who has imagination, memory, a dictionary, and some artistic sense” (Nabokov par. 9)
Nabokov, Vladimir. “Good Readers and Good Writers”. Lectures on Literatures. 1948. Lecture. PDF file.
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