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 3
... least means , as in the shock of understatement , where one's excitement arises from the surprise of finding something said so barely yet so definitively . In Eliot's “ Marina ” no one could have anticipated the “ new ships ” in “ The ...
... least means , as in the shock of understatement , where one's excitement arises from the surprise of finding something said so barely yet so definitively . In Eliot's “ Marina ” no one could have anticipated the “ new ships ” in “ The ...
Page 5
... least it kept itself free from the sophistications of Europe; it did not need to be eloquent so long as it was decent. George Chapman wrote in 1575: “I have rather regarde to make our native language commendable in it selfe, than gay ...
... least it kept itself free from the sophistications of Europe; it did not need to be eloquent so long as it was decent. George Chapman wrote in 1575: “I have rather regarde to make our native language commendable in it selfe, than gay ...
Page 9
... least intermittently awake. No one thought that the language was secure. In the preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Samuel Johnson noted: When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our speech copious ...
... least intermittently awake. No one thought that the language was secure. In the preface to A Dictionary of the English Language (1755), Samuel Johnson noted: When I took the first survey of my undertaking, I found our speech copious ...
Page 16
... least an equivocation between death and me as object of the whispering , even if it is resolved in the end in favor of death as the encompassing term . Angus Fletcher has remarked of such passages in Whitman that “ the style , instead ...
... least an equivocation between death and me as object of the whispering , even if it is resolved in the end in favor of death as the encompassing term . Angus Fletcher has remarked of such passages in Whitman that “ the style , instead ...
Page 18
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