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 17
... feeling operative for the occasion rather than a particular event deemed to be definitive and ir- refutable. This suggests that one should read Whitman's poems as trajectories that declare themselves in their own forms and values, and ...
... feeling operative for the occasion rather than a particular event deemed to be definitive and ir- refutable. This suggests that one should read Whitman's poems as trajectories that declare themselves in their own forms and values, and ...
Page 20
... feeling for eloquence is likely to be gratified by sudden gestures , flares of spirit , words breaking free from every expectation , audacities of diction and syntax . I can't promise that all the instances I quote will be found not ...
... feeling for eloquence is likely to be gratified by sudden gestures , flares of spirit , words breaking free from every expectation , audacities of diction and syntax . I can't promise that all the instances I quote will be found not ...
Page 24
... feelings of expansiveness I wanted to have : I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep Beyond the village which men still call Tyre , With leaden age o'ercargoed , dipping deep For Famagusta and the hidden sun That rings black Cyprus ...
... feelings of expansiveness I wanted to have : I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep Beyond the village which men still call Tyre , With leaden age o'ercargoed , dipping deep For Famagusta and the hidden sun That rings black Cyprus ...
Page 39
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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