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In one of the more polemical moments of "The Practice of Reading," Denis Donoghue proposes that we should teach English language and literature as if they were a foreign tongue and a foreign literature. Our problems, he says, arise from the assumption that our students know the language and are qualified to undertake a study of the literature, and "if we taught English as a second language and a second literature, we would become more responsive to the mediating character of the literary language, the opacity of language as such: we would not assume that the language is transparent to our interests." This may be implausible as a practical proposal of reform, but it effectively highlights Donoghue's overriding concern In his new book: that the arduous and exciting business of close attention to the language of Iiterature may be suffering from perilous neglect.
-- Peter Brooks, New York Times Book Review
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