The Domestication of Outrage
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 17 November 1982
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Irish literary critic Denis Donoghue gives the second Reith lecture from his series entitled 'The Mystery of Art'. The current Henry James Professor of English and American Letters at New York University explores society's comprehension of art.
In this lecture titled 'The Domestication of Outrage', Denis Donoghue assesses how casual materials are transformed into pieces of art and how society evaluates the finished pieces. Donoghue argues that the greatness of art lies in this theological space. He looks at the way people view art and considers the relationship between artists and the art that they create. Is it an expression of character or is the individual unimportant?
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. This lecture in the series |
| 0:05.3 | The Arts Without Mystery, given by Dennis Donahoo, was originally broadcast in 1982. |
| 0:11.5 | It's hard these days to feel outrage. When the Argentinian army took possession of |
| 0:17.1 | South Georgia and the Falkland Islands, many people felt that it was outrageous. |
| 0:22.5 | But I think, too, that they were consoled to discover that they could still feel this emotion. |
| 0:27.6 | Mary Whitehouse has made a public life for herself by specialising in outrage. |
| 0:32.5 | Not so much by collecting instances of the outrageous as by alerting herself to the sense of it, keeping it going |
| 0:38.9 | when it would otherwise have lapsed, as it has lapsed in most people. The plain fact is that bourgeois society |
| 0:46.2 | can accommodate nearly anything. I should say incidentally that I use the word bourgeois as a neutral |
| 0:52.4 | term and often a term of praise, |
| 0:55.0 | though one is supposed to use it nowadays only for irony or contempt. |
| 0:59.8 | To me, a bourgeois liberal is one who bases his liberalism |
| 1:03.0 | upon a commitment to the values of a family man, |
| 1:06.2 | anxious to secure a decent future for his children. |
| 1:09.8 | A bourgeois society approves these values |
| 1:12.1 | and regards the occasions on which they are defeated as regrettable. |
| 1:17.2 | A bourgeois criticism of art likes to report |
| 1:20.0 | that images which seem wild or bizarre |
| 1:22.6 | are not really different from the ordinary images with which we are familiar. |
| 1:28.3 | Such criticism likes to take part in the rapid domestication of the outrageous, |
| 1:33.8 | which Leo Steinberg has named as the most typical feature of contemporary artistic life. |
| 1:40.2 | The artistic attempts made from time to time to outrage people are hapless. We wouldn't expect |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from BBC, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of BBC and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.