Denis Donoghue (born 1928) is an Irish literary critic. As of 2005, he is Henry James Chair of English and American Letters at New York University.
He was born at Tullow, County Carlow, into a Catholic family, and brought up in Warrenpoint, County Down where his father was in the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
He studied Latin and English at University College, Dublin, graduating in 1949; and then at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He completed a doctorate at the University of Cambridge in 1957, and returned to Dublin, becoming a Professor there. He was much influenced by T. S. Eliot.
Works
- The Third Voice: Modern British and American Verse Drama (1959)
- The Integrity of Yeats (1964) editor
- An Honoured Guest - New Essays on W.B. Yeats (1965) editor with J. R. Mulryne
- Connoisseurs of Chaos: Ideas of Order in Modern American Poetry (1965)
- The Ordinary Universe: Soundings in Modern Literature (1968) criticism
- Swift Revisited (1968) editor, Thomas Davis Lectures, with Roger McHugh , Matthew Hodgart , Mark Kinkead-Weekes , John Holloway
- Emily Dickinson (1969)
- Jonathan Swift: A Critical Introduction (1969) editor
- Jonathan Swift, Penguin Critical Anthologies (1971) editor
- William Butler Yeats (1971)
- W. B. Yeats, Memoirs (1972) editor
- Thieves of Fire (1973) T.S. Eliot Memorial Lectures.
- Seven American Poets from MacLeish to Nemerov (1975) essays on John Berryman, Richard Eberhart, Randall Jarrell, Robert Lowell, Archibald MacLeish, Howard Nemerov and Theodore Roethke
- The Sovereign Ghost: Studies in Imagination (1976)
- Ferocious Alphabets (1981) criticism
- The Politics of Modern Criticism (1981)
- The Arts Without Mystery (1983) 1982 Reith Lectures
- Creation and Interpretation (1984) with William Barrett, Richard Wollheim
- R. P. Blackmur, Selected Essays (1986) editor
- We Irish : Essays on Irish Literature & Society (1986)
- Reading America: Essays on American Literature (1987)
- America in Theory (1988) editor with Leslie Berlowitz and Louis Menand
- England their England: Commentaries on English Language and Literature (1988)
- Warrenpoint (1990) memoirs
- The Pure Good Of Theory (1992) Bucknell Lectures in Literary Theory
- Who Says What and The Question of Voice (1992) Princess Grace Irish Library Lectures
- The Old Moderns,: Essays on Literature and Theory (1994)
- Walter Pater: Lover of Strange Souls (1995) biography
- Henry James Complete Stories, 1898-1910 (1997) editor
- Practice Of Reading (1998)
- Words Alone : The Poet T. S. Eliot (2000)
- Adam's Curse: Reflections on Religion and Literature (2001)
- Speaking of Beauty (2003)
- Life Mask (2004)
Reference
- Christopher J.. Knight (2003) Uncommon Readers : Denis Donoghue, Frank Kermode, George Steiner, and the Tradition of the Common Reader
