Seamus Deane

Seamus Deane ( born 1940 in Derry, Northern Ireland) is an Irish author and literary scholar.

Deane studied at Queen's University Belfast. There was one of his fellow students who later became Canadian writer George McWhirter and the later Irish writer and Nobel literature laureate Seamus Heaney. Then Seamus Deane studied at the University of Cambridge. He first made ​​his name as a poet. Through his novel Reading in the Dark, which was nominated for the Booker Prize in 1996 and 1997, the Irish Times Literary Award was given, he stepped into the light of a broader public.

In Ireland, it is known mainly by the total return of the now five-volume Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing. This is an attempt to give a comprehensive overview of the entire Irish literature. A particular focus is on the lyrics. On the one hand solved the first three volumes appeared in 1991 with some critics because of the wide selection of enthusiasm, on the other hand, many Unionists and especially women felt strongly underrepresented. This problem was solved with the volumes IV and V ( 2002) in part; they are devoted to the literature of Irish women.

Seamus Deane taught until 1993 as Professor of Modern English and American Literature at University College Dublin. He is a member of Aosdána.

Works

• Gradual Wars (1972 )
• Rumours (1977 )
• History Lessons (1983 )
• A Short History of Irish Literature (1986 )
• The French Englightenment and Revolution in England 1798-1832 (1988 )
• Selected Poems (1988 )
• ( as General Editor ), The Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, 5 vols. 1991-2002
• Reading in the Dark (1996; Germany 1997: read in the dark, Translator: G. Bandini and D. King, ISBN 3446191011 )