On EloquenceYale University Press, 2008 M10 1 - 208 pages On Eloquence questions the common assumption that eloquence is merely a subset of rhetoric, a means toward a rhetorical end. Denis Donoghue, an eminent and prolific critic of the English language, holds that this assumption is erroneous. While rhetoric is the use of language to persuade people to do one thing rather than another, Donoghue maintains that eloquence is gratuitous, ideally autonomous, in speech and writing an upsurge of creative vitality for its own sake. He offers many instances of eloquence in words, and suggests the forms our appreciation of them should take. Donoghue argues persuasively that eloquence matters, that we should indeed care about it. Because we should care about any instances of freedom, independence, creative force, sprezzatura, he says, especially when we liveperhaps this is increasingly the casein a culture of the same, featuring official attitudes, stereotypes of the officially enforced values, sedated language, a politics of pacification. A noteworthy addition to Donoghues long-term project to reclaim a disinterested appreciation of literature as literature, this volume is a wise and pleasurable meditation on eloquence, its unique ability to move or give pleasure, and its intrinsic value. |
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Page 14
... death , And again death , death , death , death , Hissing melodious , neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart , But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet , Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving ...
... death , And again death , death , death , death , Hissing melodious , neither like the bird nor like my arous'd child's heart , But edging near as privately for me rustling at my feet , Creeping thence steadily up to my ears and laving ...
Page 15
... death is entirely creative or not — though in the end it is , “ the word up from the waves , ” death being in Whitman's terms a part of life . Twenty lines back , Whitman wondered , in the guise of “ the boy's soul , ” whether the bird ...
... death is entirely creative or not — though in the end it is , “ the word up from the waves , ” death being in Whitman's terms a part of life . Twenty lines back , Whitman wondered , in the guise of “ the boy's soul , ” whether the bird ...
Page 16
... death , ” “ song , ” and “ word . ” Reading the passage with students , I'd try to indicate the kind of attention one might pay to the last line and the various forms of the verb to whisper . In the first section , “ Are you whispering ...
... death , ” “ song , ” and “ word . ” Reading the passage with students , I'd try to indicate the kind of attention one might pay to the last line and the various forms of the verb to whisper . In the first section , “ Are you whispering ...
Page 33
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Page 36
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Adorno Aeneas agile with temporal Bartleby blue Browne's Cambridge catachresis chapter claim Collected Poems context culture Dante death Derrida Dido Donne English Language Essays expression eyes feeling Finnegans Wake Flaubert Geoffrey Hill gesture gives Guy Davenport Gweneth Hugh Kenner human Hydriotaphia Ibid imagination John John Donne Kenneth Burke King knock Lady Macbeth last line Latin literary Literature live Locke London Madame Bovary means mind modern night Ophelia Oxford passage passion phrase play pleasure poet poetry Professor Hogan prose quence quoted R. P. Blackmur reader reading reason rhetoric rhyme rhythm seems sense sentence Shakespeare silence song without words soul sounds speak speech stanza Stevens story style sweet syllable T. S. Eliot take the train talk temporal intervals things thought tion trans translation tree University Press verbal W. B. Yeats William Empson Woolf writing Yeats