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 4
... writers, but when elo- quence arises, we recognize it as a discovery within the medium itself, free of every rhetorical motive, an expressive act come upon as if by the way and with no intent of its being sought. To appreciate eloquence ...
... writers, but when elo- quence arises, we recognize it as a discovery within the medium itself, free of every rhetorical motive, an expressive act come upon as if by the way and with no intent of its being sought. To appreciate eloquence ...
Page 7
... writing predicated on sci- ence and civil conversation as distinct alike from the low style of satire and from the high style of epic and the sublime . In the first years of the eighteenth century , these motives expressed themselves ...
... writing predicated on sci- ence and civil conversation as distinct alike from the low style of satire and from the high style of epic and the sublime . In the first years of the eighteenth century , these motives expressed themselves ...
Page 9
... writers of classical reputation or ac- knowledged authority. Judged by Johnson's criteria, the language was in decline. He wanted to “ascertain” and “fix” it at the point now reached in his pronouncements upon it, his receptions and ...
... writers of classical reputation or ac- knowledged authority. Judged by Johnson's criteria, the language was in decline. He wanted to “ascertain” and “fix” it at the point now reached in his pronouncements upon it, his receptions and ...
Page 11
... - bitions of the country have conformed themselves . The invaluable works of our elder writers , I had almost said the works of Shakspeare and Milton , are driven into neglect by frantic novels , sickly and Taking Notes / 11.
... - bitions of the country have conformed themselves . The invaluable works of our elder writers , I had almost said the works of Shakspeare and Milton , are driven into neglect by frantic novels , sickly and Taking Notes / 11.
Page 13
... writing I care about are increas- ingly hard to expound : aesthetic finesse , beauty , eloquence , style , form , imagination , fiction , the architecture of a sentence , the bearing of rhyme , pleasure , “ how to do things with words ...
... writing I care about are increas- ingly hard to expound : aesthetic finesse , beauty , eloquence , style , form , imagination , fiction , the architecture of a sentence , the bearing of rhyme , pleasure , “ how to do things with words ...
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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