Synopses & Reviews
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.
An excellent and eloquent book.”James Wood, New York Times Book Review
A beautiful book about beauty. Enormously learned, allusive, recuperative, and citational, it is a passionate meditation on what has been said about beauty in the West from the Greeks to the present day.”J. Hillis Miller
Donoghue talks . . . with a delightful informality and absence of dogma. . . . One of the most charming features of Denis Donoghues book is his appendix of afterwords, brief quotations on beauty from sundry writers.”John Bayley, New York Review of Books
Continuously fascinating, continuously readable, the book speaks of beauty, and of speakers of beauty, in its own calm, steady voice. You wont want to lay it down.”Hugh Kenner
Review
"Speaking of Beauty is a beautiful book about beauty. Enormously learned, allusive, recuperative, and citational, it is a passionate meditation on what has been said about beauty in the West from the Greeks to the present day. Donoghue performs, like the rider in Wallace Stevens's essay, 'The Noble Rider and the Sound of Words,' a heroic work of conservation and elevation."—J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine
Review
“Continuously fascinating, continuously readable, the book speaks of beauty, and of speakers of beauty, in its own calm, steady voice. You wont want to lay it down.”—Hugh Kenner, author of The Pound Era
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 189-202) and index.
About the Author
Denis Donoghue is University Professor and Henry James Professor of English and American Letters at New York University.
Table of Contents
Speaking of beauty -- The tragic sense of beauty -- Every wrinkle the touch of a master -- The force of form -- Ruskin, Venice, and the fate of beauty.