A Short History of Irish Literature by Seamus Deane
Published 1986 · 70,000 words · about 6 hours at an average pace · Essays & Criticism
How hard is A Short History of Irish Literature to read?
A Short History of Irish Literature scores 45 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 62 out of 100
- Clear scholarly prose accessible to advanced undergraduates.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Abstraction: 68 out of 100
- Balances historical narrative with interpretive claims about cultural meaning.
- Information density: 75 out of 100
- Covers fifteen centuries in under three hundred pages; each page is packed with literary-historical information.
- Narrative indirection: 100 out of 100
- Proceeds chronologically with direct, unambiguous organization.
- Symbolic density: 12 out of 100
- Critical exposition rather than figurative writing.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Earnest historical-critical tone with little ironic register.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Clear periodization and conclusions throughout.
- Structural complexity: 28 out of 100
- Conventional chronological survey structure with period-by-period chapters.
How A Short History of Irish Literature is regarded
A Short History of Irish Literature holds a literary regard score of 62 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.