The Practice of Reading

Distinguished critic Denis Donoghue here provides a sustained conversation about the nature and importance of literary interpretation, arguing that we must read texts closely and imaginatively, rather than merely theorizing about them. Discussing texts that range from Shakespeare's plays to a novel by Cormac McCarthy, Donoghue demonstrates what serious and informed reading entails.

Literature & Fiction

Donoghue, Professor Denis

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

This lucid and elegantly written book is a sustained conversation about the nature and importance of literary interpretation. Distinguished critic Denis Donoghue argues that we must read texts closely and imaginatively, as opposed to merely or mistakenly theorizing about them. He shows what serious reading entails by discussing texts that range from Shakespeare's plays to a novel by Cormac McCarthy. Donoghue begins with a personal chapter about his own early experiences reading literature while he was living and teaching in Ireland. He then deals with issues of theory, focusing on the validity of different literary theories, on words and their performances, on the impingement of oral and written conditions of reading, and on such current forces as technology and computers that impinge on the very idea of reading. Finally he examines certain works of literature: Shakespeare’s Othello and Macbeth, Swift’s Gulliver's Travels, a passage from Wordsworth’s The Prelude, a chapter of Joyce’s Ulysses, Yeats’s "Leda and the Swan" and "Coole and Ballylee, 1931," and Cormac McCarthy’s Blood Meridian demonstrating what these texts have in common and how they must be differentiated through a sympathetic, imaginative, and informed reading.

DONOGHUE, Denis

When Denis Donoghue left Warrenpoint and went to Dublin in September 1946, he entered University College as a student of Latin and English. A few months later he also started as a student of lieder at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. These studies have informed his reading of English, Irish, and American literature. Now in this volume, one of our most distinguished readers of modern literature offers his most personal book of literary criticism. Donoghue’s Words Alone isan intellectual memoir, a lucid and illuminating account of his engagement with the works of T. S. Eliot―from initial undergraduate encounters with “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” to later submission to Eliot’s entire writings. “The pleasure of Eliot’s words persists,” Donoghue says, “only because in good faith it can’t be denied.” Submission to Eliot, in Donoghue’s case, involves the ear as much as it does the mind. He is a reader who listens attentively and a writer whose own music in these pages commands attention. Whether he is writing about Eliot’s poetry or confronting the (often contentious) prose, Donoghue eloquently demonstrates what it means to read and to hear a master of language.

Words Alone: The Poet T.S. Eliot

British & Irish

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Books by Donoghue, Professor Denis

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Donoghue, Professor Denis. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

The Practice of Reading

The Practice of Reading

Words Alone: The Poet T.S. Eliot