1940- [Seamus Francis Deane]; b. Bogside, Derry, ed. St. Columb’s College, Derry, proceeded to QUB, BA, and Cambridge (Ph.D.); taught at Oregon, and Berkeley as Fulbright Fellow 1966-68; lecturer in English and American Literature, UCD, 1969, and later Professor; visiting lecturer, Indiana University, Notre Dame, and Berkeley; contrib. scholarly articles La Revue de Littérature comparée; Modern Language Review, and Journal of the History of Ideas; reviews in Times Literary Supplement and New York Review of Books, and London Review of Books; Field Day director; co-ed. Atlantis (1969-73); guest. ed., The Crane Bag, 1979; a director of Field Day Theatre Company; pamphlet poetry publication, While Jewels Rot (1965); poetry collections include Gradual Wars (1972), winner of “Æ” Memorial Prize, and Rumours (1977); closely involved in literary and cultural discussion with Seamus Heaney, 1979-80; issued History Lessons (1983) and later a Selected Poems (1988); inaugurated Field Day Pamphlet series, and issued Civilians and Barbarians (Derry 1983) as No. 3, being a critique of the stereotypes imposed by colonialism, including reflections on the conditions of Long Kesh prison (‘the most horrific imagery of degradation’); issued Heroic Styles: The Tradition of an Idea (1984), accusing W. B. Yeats of ‘the pathology of literary unionism’ and proposing a re-reading of Irish literature, to be fulfilled in the Field Day Anthology (1991); also criticism, Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature (1984), and A Short History of Irish Literature (1986), and issued dissertation as The French Enlightenment and Revolution in England 1989-1832 (1988), dealing with Edmund Burke, S. T. Coleridge, William Godwin, Shelley and others; contrib. on Stephen Dedalus to Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (1990); appt. Keough Prof. of Irish Studies at Notre Dame, 1993- ; gave Clarendon Lectures, Oxford, May 1995; accompanied Seamus Heaney as a member of his party to the Nobel Prize award presentation in Stockholm, Jan. 1996; Reading in the Dark (1996), a semi-autobiographical novel; first excerpted as ‘Vanishings’ in Irish Review (1988), later serialised in Granta (?1991); shortlisted for Booker Prize, and compared by author to Goodbye to All That; read by Stephen Rea on BBC3; contrib. an introduction to the Penguin edn. of Joyce’s Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man; a keynote lecture on ‘Famine Politics’, Derry Famine Commemoration, 21 Feb. 1996; chaired symposium on ‘Secrets and Lies 25 Years On’, commemorating Bloody Sunday (30th Jan. 1972) and calling for a re-enquiry; Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing Since 1790 (1997), based on 1996 Clarendon Lectures at Oxford; appt. Director of Keough Institute, Notre Dame University and ND Summer School at Newman House, Stephen’s Green, Dublin, with outreach at Magee; participant in debate with Denis Donoghue and others, NY, Dec. 1997; scripted commemorative documentary on 1798, with Kevin Whelan, Luke Gibbon and others, 1998; working on The Wizard, a gothic novel; IASIL keynote lecture, “Two Oxford Movements: 1850-1900”, DCU 2001; gave commissioned lecture on Thomas Moore at the RIA on the poet’s centenary, March 2002. DIW ORM OCIL FDA
Creative Writing:
Poetry, While Jewels Rot (Belfast: Festival Publs. 1965); Gradual Wars (Shannon: IUP 1972); Rumours (Dublin: Dolmen 1977); History Lessons (Dublin: Gallery Press 1983); Selected Poems (Dublin: Gallery Press 1988).
Fiction, Reading in the Dark (London: Jonathan Cape 1996), 239pp. [first undertaken by Granta/Penguin 1991.
Criticism:
Monographs: Civilians and Barbarians [Field Day Pamph. No. 3] (Derry: Field Day 1983); Heroic Styles: The Tradition of an Idea [Field Day Pamph. No. 4] (Derry: Field Day 1984), rep. in Ireland’s Field Day, ed. Roger McHugh (Derry: Field Day Theatre Co. 1985): pp.45-59; Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature, 1880-1980 (London: Faber & Faber 1985; pb. 1985), 199pp. A Short History of Irish Literature (London: Hutchinson 1986) [another edn. Notre Dame UP 1986]; The French Enlightenment and Revolution in England 1789-1832 (Harvard UP 1988); ed., Nationalism, Colonialism and Literature (Field Day Company & Minnesota UP 1990) [incl. Edward Said, ‘Yeats and Decolonization’, pp.69-98); Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing Since 1790 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1997), 277pp., and Do. [pb. edn.] (1998), 280pp.; Seamus Deane, Foreign Affections: Essays on Edmund Burke (Cork UP 2004), 300pp..
Articles: ‘Why Bogside?’, in Honest Ulsterman, No. 27 (Jan.-March 1971); ‘The Writer and the Troubles’, Threshold, No. 25 (Summer 1974), pp.13-17; ‘Irish Poetry and Irish Nationalism, A Survey’, opening essay in Douglas Dunn, ed., Two Decades of Irish Writing (1975), pp.4-22; ‘Mo Bhealach Féin’, in John Jordan, ed., The Pleasures of Gaelic Reading (Cork: Mercier 1977), pp.39-52; ‘Poetry in Northern Ireland’, in 20th Century Studies, No. 4 [Univ. of Kent] (November 1970); ‘The Appetites of Gravity: Contemporary Irish Poetry,’ Sewanee Review, 84, 1/2 (1976), pp.202-05; ‘Literary Myths of the Revival: A Case for their Abandonment’, Joseph Ronsley, ed., Myth and Reality in Irish Literature (Wilfred Laurien UP, 1977), pp.317-29; ‘Yeats and O’Casey: Exemplary Dramatists’ Threshold, No. 30 (Spring 1979), pp.21-28 [defending Yeats’s model]; rep. as ‘O’Casey and Yeats: Exemplary Dramatists’, in Celtic Revivals: Essays in Modern Irish Literature, 1880-1980 (London: Faber & Faber 1985), pp.101-22; ‘An Example of Tradition’, in Crane Bag, 3, 1 (1979); ‘What is Field Day?’, unpaginated insert in programme of Brian Friel, Three Sisters (Derry 1981); ‘The Longing for Modernity’ [Editorial], in Deane, ed., Threshold, No. 32 (Winter 1982), pp.1-7; also ‘Joyce and Nationalism’, in Colin MacCabe, ed., James Joyce: New Perspectives (Brighton: Harvester Wheatsheaf 1982) [q.pp.]; ‘Russian History Lesson’, in The Crave Bag, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1983), p.176 [text and poem]; Irish Writers 1886-1986 [Irish heritage Ser. No. 57] (Eason & Son Ltd. 1986), 24pp.; ‘Remembering the Future’, in The Crane Bag [RTÉ/UCD Lectures], 8, 1 (1984), 81-92; ‘Fictions and Politics: Irish Nineteenth-Century National Character 1790-1900’, in Gaéliana, VI (1984) [rep. in Tom Dunne, ed., The Writer as Witness: Literature as Historical Evidence, Cork UP 1987, c.p.103]; ‘“Masked with Matthew Arnold’s Face”: Joyce and Liberalism’, in Morris Beja et al., eds., James Joyce: The Centennial Symposium (Illinois UP 1986), pp.9-20; ‘Reconciliation of Cultures: Apocalypse Now!’, in Alan D. Falconer, ed., Reconciling Memories (Dublin: Columba Press 1988) [on disconnecting Church and State]; and ‘Joyce the Irishman’, in Derek Attridge, ed., The Cambridge Companion to James Joyce (Cambridge UP 1990); ‘Wherever Green is Read’, in Máirín Ní Dhonnchadha and Theo Dorgan, eds., Revising the Rising (Derry: Field Day 1991), pp.91-105; ‘Canon Fodder: Literary Mythologies in Ireland’, in Jean Lundy and Aodán MacPóilin, eds., Styles of Belonging: Cultural Identities in Ulster (Belfast 1992), cp.31. See also Dymphna Callaghan, ‘An Interview with Seamus Deane, in Social Text, 38 (1994); review of Terry Eagleton, Heathcliff and the Great Hunger, in London Review of Books (19 Oct. 1995); review of David Simpson’s Romanticism, Nationalism, and the Revolt against Theory (Chicago UP ?1993), 243pp., in Times Literary Supplement (11 Feb. 1994) [with complete approbation]; ‘Merciless Ireland’ [review of Frank McCourt, Angela's Ashes], in Guardian Weekly ([?]18 Jan. 1997.)
Miscellaneous: gen. ed., The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 3 vols. (Derry: Field Day Co. 1992); also Preface to [Ardoyne Commemoration Project,] Ardoyne: The Untold Truth (Belfast: Beyond the Pale 2003), 560pp; The Honest Ulsterman (Contributions): ‘An Irish Intelligentsia: Reflections on its Desirability’, in The Honest Ulsterman, No. 46 (q.d.), p.27ff.; ‘The Long Ascendancy’, review of Richard Murphy, Selected Poems, in The Honest Ulsterman, No.66 (q.d.), p.66; ‘Black Mountain Jacobin’, review of Tom Paulin, The Liberty Tree, The Honest Ulsterman, No.74 (q.d.), p.49; also poems in Nos. 51, 55, 66, 74, 81 [see Tom Clyde, ed., Honest Ulsterman, Author Index, 1995]; Review of Terry Eagleton’s Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (Verso 1995) was greeted by Deane as as one of the most important contributions to the Irish cultural debates in many years (London Review of Books, q.d.); ‘Merciless Ireland’, in Guardian Weekly [rep.], [?]18 Jan. 1997, review of Frank Mcourt, Angela’s Ashes (1997) .
Series Editor: ‘Critical Conditions’, Vols. 1 & 16 (Field Day/Cork UP 1995-); Field Day Review: A Journal of Irish Studies, vol 1 (Dublin 2005-), co-editor with Breandán Mac Suibhne.
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, review of Heroic Styles: Tim Tradition of an Idea, in Cyphers, 21 (1984), pp.50-52.
Kevin Barry, review of Field Day Anthology, in The European English Messenger, 1, 3 (Autumn 1992), pp.46-49.
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, review of Field Day Anthology, in Cyphers, 35 (1992), pp.52.
Blake Morrison, review of Reading in the Dark, in Independent on Sunday (1 Sept. 1996).
Edna Longley, review of Reading in the Dark, in Fortnight (Nov. 1996).
Nick Fraser [interview-article], ‘A Kind of Life Sentence’, in The Guardian (28 Oct. 1996), p.9.
Carol Rumens, ‘Reading Deane’ [interview], in Fortnight [Belfast] (July-Aug. 1997), p.30.
Declan Kiberd, ‘In Search of Irishness’, review of Seamus Deane, Strange Country, in Éire-Ireland 32, 2 & 3 (Summer/Autumn 1997), pp.183-91 [with others].
Stephen Regan, review of Reading in the Dark, in Irish Studies Review, No. 19 (Summer 1997), pp.35-40.
Nicholas Patterson, ‘Different Strokes: An Interview with Seamus Deane’, in Boston Phoenix (6 Aug. 1998).
Danine Farquharson, ‘Resisting Genre and Type: Narrative Strategy and Instabiity in Danny Morrison’s The Wrong Man and Seamus Deane’s Reading in the Dark’.
Bill Lazenblatt, ed., Writing Ulster [‘Northern Narratives’], 6 (1999), pp.90-112, 101ff.
Interview in John Brown, ed., In the Chair: Interviews with Poets from the North of Ireland (Galway: Salmon 2002) [incls. Deane’s view of contemporaries]..
John Hildebidle, ‘Whose Field Day? Investigation of the origins, purposes, enterprises, and manner of operation of Field Day Group’ (MIT Diss.; CAIS Bibl. 1995).
Conor McCarthy, ‘Intellectual property: Edna Longley and Seamus Deane’, in Modernisation: Crisis and Culture in Ireland 1969-1992 (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2000), [Chap. 5], pp.197-228.
Mary Gray Davidson, ‘Ireland’s Ghost’, interview on “Common Ground” [radio programme; supported by Stanley Foundation, Iowa] (9 June 1998) [online & extract].
Margaret Kelleher, ‘The Cabinet of Irish Literature: A Historical Perspective on Irish Anthologies’, in Eire-Ireland: Journal of Irish Studies (Fall-Winter 2003).
Aveen McManus, “Narratives of Childhood - A Comparative Study” (MA Diss., Univ. of Ulster 2005).
Sean Lucy, ‘A Stronger, Sadder Voice’ in Crane Bag, 1.2 (1977), rep. Crane Bag Book (1982), pp.148-50..
Declan Kiberd, Anglo-Irish Attitudes [Field Day Pamphlets, No. 6] (Derry: Field Day 1984). .
Edna Longley, ‘Poetry and Politics in Northern Ireland, in The Crane Bag, 9, 1 (1985), pp.26-40; rep. as Do., in Poetry in the Wars (Bloodaxe 1986), pp.185-210.
W. J. McCormack, ‘Terence Brown and the Historians’, in The Battle of the Books: Two Decades of Irish Cultural Debate (Dublin: Lilliput 1986), pp.40-47.
Edna Longley, The Living Stream: Literature and Revisionism in Ireland, Newcastle-Upon-Tyne: Bloodaxe 1994.
Edna Longley, ‘Postcolonial versus European (and post-Ukanian Frameworks for Irish Literature’, Irish Review, 25 (1999/2000), p.76.
Terry Eagleton, review of Reading in the Dark, in New Statesman (30 Aug. 1996).
Edna Longley, ‘Autobiography as History’, review of Reading in the Dark in Fortnight Review (Nov. 1996), p.34
Damian Smyth, ‘Totalising Imperative’, Fortnight 309, Sept. 1992.
Stephanie Bachorz, ‘Postcolonial Theory and Ireland: Revising Postcolonialism’, Aaron Kelly & Alan Gillis, eds., Critical Ireland: New Essays in Literature and Culture, Four Courts Press 2001, p.9.
Julia O’Faolain, ‘The boy who wanted to know’ (Times Literary Supplement, 27 Sept. 1996), p.2.
R. F. Foster, review of Seamus Deane, Strange Country: Modernity and Nationhood in Irish Writing since 1790 (Clarendon Press) [£25 stg.), In Times (24 April 199.
Elizabeth Doyle, ‘True Class Darkly’, feature-essay, with photo-port., In Magill (Jan. 1998, p.40).
Géaroid Denvir, ‘Decolonizing the Mind: Language and Literature in Ireland’, in New Hibernia Review, 1, 1 (Spring 1997), pp.44-68.
Gerald Dawe [with D. E. S. Maxwell and Riana Dwyer] in Irish Studies: A General Introduction, ed. Bartlett et al., Gill & Macmillan 1988, p.179.
Proinsias Ó Driosceoil, ‘Frustrations of a Free State’, review of Strange Country, in Irish Times, 31 May 1997.
Mary Trotter, ‘“Double Crossing” Irish Borders: The Field Day Production of Tom Kilroy’s Double Cross’, in New Hibernia Review, 1, 1 (Spring 1997), p.31-43.
Taura Napier, ‘The Mosaic “I”: Mary Colum and Modern Irish Autobiography’, in Irish University Review, 28, 1 (Spring/Summer 1998), pp.37-55.
Conor McCarthy, Modernisation: Crisis and Culture in Ireland 1969-1992 (Four Courts Press 2000).
Mary Gray Davidson, ‘Ireland’s Ghost’, interview on Common Ground [radio station supported by Stanley Foundation, Iowa] (9 June 1998) [online].)
Michael McAteer discusses Seamus Deane's chapter-essay ‘Boredom and Apocalypse’ in Strange Country (1997; pb. 1998) in ‘Yeats’[s] Endgame: Postcolonialism and Modernism’, in Aaron Kelly & Alan Gillis, eds., Critical Ireland: New Essays in Literature and Culture (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001), pp.160-65.
Ronan Sheehan and Richard Kearney; The Crane Bag [“Socialism and Culture”], Vol. 7, No. 1 (1983), p.76.
John Gray, ‘Field Day Five Years On’, Linen Hall Review, Vol. 2, No. 2, Summer 1985, p.7.
Elmer Andrews, ed. and intro., Contemporary Irish Poetry, 1966, p.24 [Introduction, ftn.].)
Shaun Richards, ‘Progressive Regression in Contemporary Irish Culture’, [pt. 3 of] ‘The Triple Play of Irish History’, in Irish Review, Winter-Spring 1997, p.39.
Vincent Cheng, Joyce, Race and Empire, 1995, pp 94, 107,299, 312).
Nicholas Patterson, ‘Different Strokes: An Interview with Seamus Deane’, in Boston Phoenix (6 Aug. 1998; quoted in Aveen McManus, op. cit., p.48.)
Marilynn Richtarik, Acting Between the Lines: The Field Day Theatre and Irish Cultural Politics, 1980-1984 (1994), in Linen Hall Review, 12, 2 (Winter 1995/96), p.11.
Robert Garrett, Modern Irish Poetry, Tradition and Continuity from Yeats to Heaney, 1986.
Donald E. Morse, et al. A Small Nation’s Contribution to the World, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993, p.36).
[ top ]
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)