Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

The Practice of Reading

3.7/5 ( ratings)

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.

Language: English

Pages: 320

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Yale University Press

Release: March 11, 2000

ISBN: 0300082649

ISBN 13: 9780300082647

The Practice of Reading

3.7/5 ( ratings)

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.

Language: English

Pages: 320

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Yale University Press

Release: March 11, 2000

ISBN: 0300082649

ISBN 13: 9780300082647

More books from Denis Donoghue

The Complete Poetry and Selected Prose

4.2/5 ( ratings)

The Stories of J.F. Powers

4.2/5 ( ratings)

On the Shoulders of Giants: The Post-Italianate Edition

3.9/5 ( ratings)

Speaking of Beauty

3.5/5 ( ratings)

Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls

3.3/5 ( ratings)

Metaphor

Ferocious Alphabets

3.6/5 ( ratings)

The American Classics: A Personal Essay

3.4/5 ( ratings)

Words Alone: The Poet T. S. Eliot

Warrenpoint

3.7/5 ( ratings)

England, Their England

3.7/5 ( ratings)

The Ordinary Universe: Soundings In Modern Literature

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Who Says What and The Question of Voice (Princess Grace Irish Library)

3.7/5 ( ratings)

On Eloquence

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Jonathan Swift

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Daedalus 143:1 (Winter 2014) - What Humanists Do

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Third Voice: Modern British and American Drama

3.7/5 ( ratings)

The Third Policeman

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Practice of Reading

3.7/5 ( ratings)

What Happens in " Othello " ?: University of London Hilda Hulme Memorial Lecture, 1994

3.7/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?