| 3.7°C Dublin

Obituary: Denis Donoghue, the literary critic and academic who was an insightful, witty and commanding presence

Denis Donoghue who has died aged 92 in the United States Expand

Close

Denis Donoghue who has died aged 92 in the United States

Denis Donoghue who has died aged 92 in the United States

Denis Donoghue who has died aged 92 in the United States

Deaglán de Bréadún

Denis Donoghue, literary critic and academic of international standing, died peacefully after a short illness at his home in Durham, North Carolina, aged 92. Born in Tullow, Co Carlow on December 1, 1928, he was brought up in Warrenpoint, Co Down, where his father, a Kerry-born Catholic, was a sergeant in the Royal Ulster Constabulary, having previously served in Tullow with the Royal Irish Constabulary before partition.

Donoghue’s memoir Warrenpoint, first published in 1990, is a recollection of childhood and youth which also reflects the author's famously wide and comprehensive reading. In his usual style, he refers to the works of Brecht, Kafka, Joyce, Pinter, Emerson, Wordsworth, St Augustine, Philip Larkin, Flann O’Brien, Cardinal Newman and of course Seamus Heaney among others. Yet there were hardly any books at all in his boyhood family home.

He grew up in the married quarters of the police barracks in Warrenpoint. The book gave a chilling description of the relationship, or lack of it, between Catholics and Protestants at the time in the North and he wrote: “Power, such as it was, was in the hands of the Protestants: that was all a Catholic needed to know.”

Having attended St Peter’s in Warrenpoint and the Christian Brothers’ School eight kilometres away in Newry, Donoghue went on to earn a BA in English and Latin at University College Dublin and he studied singing at the Royal Irish Academy of Music. He was keen initially to become a barrister but eventually took a job as an administrative officer in the Department of Finance.

In 1953 he had a chance encounter on the street with his former English professor, Jeremiah J Hogan, who offered him an assistant lectureship at UCD. Donoghue accepted with alacrity and started a month afterwards. He received his PhD in 1958 and became Professor of English and American Literature in 1966. Thirteen years later in 1979 he was appointed to the Henry James Chair of English and American Letters at New York University (NYU), a position he held until retirement in 2013.

He wrote or edited more than 30 books and was a leading authority on WB Yeats, TS Eliot, Emily Dickinson, Joseph Conrad and Jonathan Swift among others. He helped to establish Glucksman Ireland House, NYU’s Centre for Irish and Irish-American Studies. The university regarded him as a valuable asset in its outreach to potential funders.

He was married in 1951 to Frances Rutledge, whom he met at UCD. The couple had eight children: David — who became a senior diplomat, worked on the Northern Ireland peace process and was most recently Ireland’s Ambassador to the United Nations — as well as Helen, Hugh, Celia, Mark, Barbara, Stella and Emma, the author whose novel Room was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and was made into an Oscar-nominated film. Frances predeceased Denis and he later married Melissa Malouf, a writer of fiction and professor at Duke University who was at his side when he died.

I was a student of English Literature at UCD under Denis Donoghue. His commanding presence at 6ft 7in was accompanied by profound literary insight. He wasn’t lacking in wit either: one day, a motorbike roared past in highly-dramatic fashion outside the window of the lecture hall at Earlsfort Terrace, reducing him to silence, but he recovered rapidly with a quip: “Oh Yamaha, what crimes are committed in thy name!” He may have got the model wrong, since we couldn't actually see the bike, but he sure made us laugh.

In broad political terms, Donoghue could be quite liberal, signing a declaration with other public figures against the visit of the all-white Springboks rugby team from apartheid South Africa to play against Ireland in 1970. He was not enamoured, however, of the radical Students for Democratic Action (SDA) who led the UCD Gentle Revolution in 1969.

On issues relating to Northern Ireland, he was staunchly nationalist, convinced that his father had suffered discrimination in the RUC with his promotion prospects hindered because of his Catholic background. In academic terms Donoghue was opposed to criticism that was based on ideology, because “it sacrifices literary understanding on the altar of politics”.

In his memoir he wrote that “like every other boy, I intended to live forever” and making it to 92 was a remarkable innings: he died on April 6 but, productive to the last, finished writing a book on the late novels of Henry James shortly beforehand.

Instead of a funeral, it was decided to hold a cremation in Durham, NC, and the family hopes to have a memorial service in Ireland later this year, restrictions permitting.

Entertainment Newsletter

From film and book reviews to music features and the best of TV and theatre, entertainment has you covered. Every Monday.

This field is required

Sunday Independent

Most Watched

Privacy