Bøger af Denis Donoghue

An eminent liteary critic enumerates and explores five American classics How is a classic book to be defined? How much time must elapse before a work may be judged a "classic"? And among all the works of American literature, which deserve the designation? In this provocative new book Denis Donoghue essays to answer these questions. He presents his own short list of "relative" classics--works whose appeal may not be universal but which nonetheless have occupied an important place in our culture for more than a century. These books have survived the abuses of time--neglect, contempt, indifference, willful readings, excesses of praise, and hyperbole. Donoghue bestows the term classic on just five American works: Melville's Moby-Dick, Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, Thoreau's Walden, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, and Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Examining each in a separate chapter, he discusses how the writings have been received and interpreted, and he offers his own contemporary readings, suggesting, for example, that in the post-9/11 era, Moby-Dick may be rewardingly read as a revenge tragedy. Donoghue extends an irresistible invitation to open the pages of these American classics again, demonstrating with wit and acuity how very much they have to say to us now.

W. B. Yeats's poem "e;Adam's Curse"e; provides Donoghue with motif and incentive. In Genesis God says to Adam: "e;Because thou hast harkened unto the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee, saying, Thou shalt not eat of it: cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life."e; Yeats put it this way: "e;It is certain there is no fine thing / Since Adam's curse but needs much labouring."e; Based on a conversation he had with his beloved Maud Gonne and her sister Kathleen, Yeats's poem thinks about how difficult it is to be beautiful, to write great poetry, to love. In his Erasmus Lectures, Donoghue thinks about the lasting difficulties involved in understanding, and living with, cultural, literary, and religious values that are in restless relation to one another. On these and related matters, Donoghue enters into conversation with a variety of writers, some of them-John Crowe Ransom, Hans Urs von Balthasar, William Lynch, Alasdair MacIntyre, Emmanuel Levinas, Andrew Delbanco, and Robert Bellah-signaled by the titles of the seven lectures. Into the thematic space suggested by each of these titles Donoghue invites other writers and sages to join the conversation-Henry Adams, William Empson, John Milbank, Czeslaw Milosz, Seamus Heaney, Gabriel Josipovici, and many more. The "e;talk,"e; as you might expect, keeps coming around to the reading of specific literary texts: passages from Paradise Lost, Stevens's "e;Esthetique du mal,"e; fiction by Gide and J. F. Powers and J. M. Coetzee, to name only a few. In Adan's Curse, Donoghue brings his special intelligence to bear on some of the intersections where religion and literature provocatively meet.

Warrenpoint is a memoir, and more than a memoir: with moments of novelistic narrative and lyricism wedded to musings on the aesthetic and theological themes of the author's coming of age-filial piety, original sin, a child's perceptions, and then the nature of terrorism, and of reading itself-it demonstrates the same insight and lucidity that have contributed to Denis Donoghue's fame as one of our most important critics. Taking its title from the seaside town in Northern Ireland whose police barracks served as the residence for the Catholic Donoghues, it has been described as a family romance, dealing not only with the author's love for his strong-willed, taciturn, policeman father, but his love for literature and how it shaped his life to come.

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.

Metaphor supposes that an ordinary word could have been used, but instead something unexpected appears. The point of a metaphor is to enrich experience by bringing different associations to mind, by giving something a different life. The prophetic character of metaphor, Denis Donoghue says, changes the world by changing our sense of it.

Emily Dickinson - American Writers 81 was first published in 1969. Minnesota Archive Editions uses digital technology to make long-unavailable books once again accessible, and are published unaltered from the original University of Minnesota Press editions.

In this text Denis Donoghue presents an account of his engagement with the works of T.S. Eliot. Whether writing about Eliot's poetry or confronting the poet's often contentious prose, Donoghue demonstrates what it means to read and to hear a master of the language.

In this study, Donoghue argues that texts should be read closely and imaginatively, as opposed to merely or mistakenly theorizing about them. He shows what serious reading entails in discussing texts that range from Shakespeare's plays to a novel by Cormac McCarthy.

A foremost critic of the English language here reflects on beauty and the language that it inspires in authors from Kant to Keats, Hawthorne to Housman.