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. |
From inside the book
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Page 7
... sense of the emotions of crisis , war , and assassination . Without such sentiments— some of them annually revived , as on Martin Luther King Day — the speeches would sink into the lore of their times and be smiled away as quaint or ...
... sense of the emotions of crisis , war , and assassination . Without such sentiments— some of them annually revived , as on Martin Luther King Day — the speeches would sink into the lore of their times and be smiled away as quaint or ...
Page 8
... sense of the moderns , who reject with disdain all those rhetorical tricks employed to seduce the judges , and will admit of nothing but solid argument in any debate of delib- eration . National constitution came into the question , too ...
... sense of the moderns , who reject with disdain all those rhetorical tricks employed to seduce the judges , and will admit of nothing but solid argument in any debate of delib- eration . National constitution came into the question , too ...
Page 9
... sense, delivered in proper expres- sions.”12 Apparently he thought that British culture was at risk of becoming phlegmatic, despite local disputes of Whig and Tory that kept it at least intermittently awake. No one thought that the ...
... sense, delivered in proper expres- sions.”12 Apparently he thought that British culture was at risk of becoming phlegmatic, despite local disputes of Whig and Tory that kept it at least intermittently awake. No one thought that the ...
Page 15
... yet all undaunted . . . ? 21 In the end , Whitman is prepared to accept that the bird is demon — that is , daimon — and brother and to fuse its song with his own . The verse is free , in the sense that one Taking Notes / 15.
... yet all undaunted . . . ? 21 In the end , Whitman is prepared to accept that the bird is demon — that is , daimon — and brother and to fuse its song with his own . The verse is free , in the sense that one Taking Notes / 15.
Page 16
Denis Donoghue. The verse is free , in the sense that one line is related to the next not by a count of syllables or ... sense : the aim is to produce a language that , instead of communicating something , reveals its own elemental laws ...
Denis Donoghue. The verse is free , in the sense that one line is related to the next not by a count of syllables or ... sense : the aim is to produce a language that , instead of communicating something , reveals its own elemental laws ...
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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