re-imagining all I had read, the various ways the plot might unravel. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. In the following passage, contemporary novelist Seamus Deane reflects on his. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. 1 While not denying the potential for an analysis of Seamus Deane’s celebrated debut Reading in the Dark in terms of ‘spatial form’, in this chapter I intend to focus upon this text in terms of the first two groups - that is, theories which have addressed themselves to the novelistic representation of built and natural environments. At first glance, it covers familiar turf: an Irish family riven by the political strife of the 1920s trying to live with the legacy of bloodshed and betrayal-all seen through the eyes of a. This latter, most fully expounded by Joseph Frank in his book The Widening Gyre (1963), concerns what he termed ‘spatial form in modern literature’. For convenience, however, they may be organised into three main groups: those that focus on the built environment, those emphasising apparently ‘natural’ outdoor environments, and those engaging with issues of aesthetic spatiality.
Few critics have done more than he has to shape contemporary understandings of the wider span of modern Irish literature in English, yet most of the commentary on Deane’s work so far seems to be much more fixated with estabboundary 2 37:2 (2010) DOI 10.The critical systems through which a spatial analysis of the modern novel might be attempted are many and various. Several of his books are amongst the most noteworthy volumes of literary criticism to be produced in Ireland in the twentieth century, but there is little to suggest that Irish intellectuals of any stripe have yet taken serious measure of his larger project. At first glance, it covers familiar turf: an Irish family riven by the political strife of the 1920s trying to live with the legacy of bloodshed and betrayal.
Although he has been one of the most charismatic and authoritative figures in the Irish humanities for many decades, Deane’s work, with the exception of his novel Reading in the Dark (1996), has provoked surprisingly little commentary. The fine quality of his critical intelligence is generally acknowledged, but there are aspects of Deane’s scholarship and career that seem to elude admirers no less than adversaries. In a reflexive comment, the student points out that most experienced writers are taught to ‘show not tell.’ The student then analyzes what he or she shows us, observing that Deane arrives at a simple truth: that ‘ordinary life’ affords the greatest pleasure. Dark Fields of the Republic: Seamus Deane’s Sundered Provinces Joe Cleary 1 Seamus Deane is one of twentieth-century Ireland’s most accomplished and influential but also one of its most enigmatic cultural critics.
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