Words Alone

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. Donoghues Words Alone is an intellectual memoir, a lucid and illuminating account of his engagement with the works of T. S. Eliotfrom initial undergraduate encounters with The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock to later submission to Eliots entire writings. The pleasure of Eliots words persists, Donoghue says, only because in good faith it cant be denied. Submission to Eliot, in Donoghues 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 Eliots poetry or confronting the (often contentious) prose, Donoghue eloquently demonstrates what it means to read and to hear a master of language.