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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... Language and Literature America in Theory (editor, with Louis Menand and Leslie Berlowitz) Warrenpoint Being Modern Together The Pure Good of Theory The Old Moderns: Essays on Literature and Theory Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls ...
... Language and Literature America in Theory (editor, with Louis Menand and Leslie Berlowitz) Warrenpoint Being Modern Together The Pure Good of Theory The Old Moderns: Essays on Literature and Theory Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls ...
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... language is deemed to be its first duty. That is a dove. That is a sparrow. That is a lamb. But as language developed in complex relation to conscious- ness, it discovered possibilities beyond reference. Abstractions 1 are among those ...
... language is deemed to be its first duty. That is a dove. That is a sparrow. That is a lamb. But as language developed in complex relation to conscious- ness, it discovered possibilities beyond reference. Abstractions 1 are among those ...
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... language becomes autonomous: thought “ceases to be practice.”2 In some degree, because it is never entirely de- tached from things and its responsibility toward them. Alice in Wonderland and Finnegans Wake are nearly detached from them ...
... language becomes autonomous: thought “ceases to be practice.”2 In some degree, because it is never entirely de- tached from things and its responsibility toward them. Alice in Wonderland and Finnegans Wake are nearly detached from them ...
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... language, in its bearing upon elo- quence, theory and ideology, did not arise until well into the sixteenth century. Till then, native speakers of the language and scholars of it alike agreed that English was rude, if not barbarous, by ...
... language, in its bearing upon elo- quence, theory and ideology, did not arise until well into the sixteenth century. Till then, native speakers of the language and scholars of it alike agreed that English was rude, if not barbarous, by ...
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... language commendable in it selfe, than gay with the feathers of straunge birdes.”7 Two, the modern attitude: you could hold that as long as the language was content with its rural honesty, it could have no access to the new knowledges ...
... language commendable in it selfe, than gay with the feathers of straunge birdes.”7 Two, the modern attitude: you could hold that as long as the language was content with its rural honesty, it could have no access to the new knowledges ...
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