Article: On eloquence and purpose.(Book review)

On Eloquence. By Denis Donoghue. New Haven: Yale University Press 2008. ISBN 978-0-300-12541-2. Pp. 199. $27.50.

Eloquence upon eloquence. How can one argue against it? Yet that is my task in this review: to honor this eloquent defense of eloquence by Denis Donoghue, recipient of the lifetime achievement award by the Conference on Christianity & Literature in 1991, and yet to question it closely, perhaps even sharply. But why? Well, there's a whole theory of literature (and criticism and education) at stake in what one says about eloquence, and the theory of literature behind this thoroughly enjoyable florilegium of eloquence is, I suspect, wrong.

I ...

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