Denis Donoghue, an Irish academic whose wide-ranging
literary tastes, erudite analysis of poets like T.S. Eliot and William Butler
Yeats, and fierce aversion to the impositions of postmodern theory earned him a
reputation as one of the last great humanist critics, died April 6 at his home
in Durham, North Carolina. He was 92.
اضافة اعلان
His death was confirmed by his daughter Emma Donoghue, a
novelist.
First at University College Dublin and later at New York
University, Donoghue carved out a middle ground in the contested landscape of
late 20th century literary studies, standing opposed to both the politicized
theories of the left and the traditionalist pieties of the right.
He was an ardent opponent of deconstruction and in the late
1970s and early ’80s he wrote lengthy takedowns of its leading proponents
including Jacques Derrida and Paul de Man. But his criticism later softened. At
least the deconstructionists paid close attention to texts, as he did, unlike
the real objects of his derision: what he called “ideologically opportunistic”
theories that, taking a page from Marxism, saw literature as little more than a
social construct to be analyzed alongside things like comic books and soap
operas, and that criticized as hopelessly bourgeois the sort of close reading
he performed.
“If I am listening to a quartet by Bartok or reading
‘Nostromo,’” he wrote in his book “The Practice of Reading” (1998), “I should
not be using the occasion to plan my next move in the class struggle or the war
of all against all.”
Although he was never associated with an intellectual
movement or theory, there were certain throughlines in Donoghue’s work — above
all his fascination with the irrational, almost mystical quality at the heart
of the creative process.
He expounded his views prodigiously. As an author, co-author
or editor of more than 30 books, he also contributed lengthy essays to learned
publications like Salmagundi and The Sewanee Review and punchy shorter pieces
to The New York Review of Books and The New Republic. He had just finished
writing a book on the later novels of Henry James when he died.
In the late 1980s he shared a weekly rotating column in The
New York Times Book Review with Anatole Broyard, Cynthia Ozick and Marilynne
Robinson, a position that allowed him to write expansively not just about books
but about whatever caught his mind.
“He thought it was a great thing to be able to write about
Jonathan Swift one minute and Lady Gaga the next,” his daughter said.
Denis Martin Donoghue was born December 1, 1928, in Tullow, a
village in southern Ireland, and grew up in Warrenpoint, a seaside town just
over the border into Northern Ireland.
His father, also named Denis, had been a sergeant in the
Royal Irish Constabulary, a police force. After Ireland won independence in
1922, he was allowed to stay on with the Royal Ulster Constabulary in the
north, although he had little hope for advancement as a Roman Catholic in the
British-run and Protestant-dominated unit.
Young Denis’ mother, Johanna (O’Neill) Donoghue, was a
homemaker who took care of him and his four siblings. They lived in the married
quarters of the constabulary barracks, beside a tall concrete wall built to
protect them from attack by Irish nationalists.
He took to reading early, and although his parents were not
bookish, they encouraged his interests. In his memoir, “Warrenpoint” (1990), he
wrote that his love for his stern but kind father set the tone for his love of
the written word as something to be revered. “I am sure,” he wrote, “that the
authority of a written sentence and the authority of my father were one and the
same.”
He studied Latin and English at University College Dublin.
He also studied lieder singing at the Royal Irish Academy of Music.
Donoghue married Frances Rutledge, a former teacher and
flight attendant, in 1951. She died in 2018. In addition to his daughter Emma,
he is survived by his second wife, novelist Melissa Malouf; four other
daughters, Barbara Nelson and Celia, Helen and Stella Donoghue; three sons,
David, Hugh and Mark; 11 grandchildren; and two great-grandchildren.
After graduation he took a position in the Irish civil
service, which made him miserable. Three years into the job, he encountered one
of his old professors on a Dublin sidewalk and told him how unhappy he was. His
mentor offered to make him a lecturer at the university.
He went on to receive a master’s and a doctorate in
literature at the university and another master’s degree from Cambridge, where
he lectured from 1965 to 1966. He returned to Dublin a full professor and
remained there until 1980, when he moved to New York University.
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