Warrenpoint - Hardcover

Denis Donoghue was born in Tullow, County Carlow, in 1928. He took his BA, MA and PhD at University College, Dublin, and received an MA at Cambridge when he joined the teaching faculty there. He was Professor of Modern English and American Literature at University College and currently holds the Henry James Chair of English and American Letters at New York University. He has written many works of literary criticism, as well as studies of Yeats, Swift and Emily Dickinson.

Much has been written about the life of the mind, but rarely to such effect as in this book. Donoghue is a scholar of international prestige whose comments on his native Ireland have until now been restricted to its literature. This memoir, named for his hometown in Northern Ireland, is a surprising, enlightening, and exciting turn to autobiography. Written in the form of meditations that range from a few sentences to a few pages, it resembles Yeats's Memoirs in grace, provocation, evocation, and above all the exhilaration of the examined life. In very loose narrative fashion Donoghue covers his passage to adulthood, focusing on place, father, and ideas, all without regret. Indeed, ideas are a palpable presence here: in language addressed to all readers Donoghue draws on theology, philosophy, and aesthetics to account for his own experience and to celebrate forms of faith commonly under assault. This is a superb and inspiring book for a wide contemporary audience. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/1/90.
- John P. Harrington, Cooper Union, New York
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