The Writers of Wales Database

BURKE, SEAN

Novelist, literary critic, academic. Seán was born in Wales to an Irish family and brought up in Cardiff. He went on to study at the Universities of Canterbury and Edinburgh. His first major work, The Death and Return of the Author, was an acclaimed critique of the critical theories of Barthes, Derrida and Foucault. Seán’s Cardiff–based ’literary noir ’ novel, Deadwater, appeared in 2002 and was published in France as Au bout des docks (2007). Seán was Reader in English at the University of Durham for thirteen years. His areas of interest include critical theory, ideas of authorship and subjectivity, and intellectual ownership.

Reviews:
With respect to The Ethics of Writing: Authorship and Legacy in Plato and Nietzsche (Edinburgh University Press, 2008)

"…Sean Burke’s new book is a subtle meditation on the problems, pleasures, perils and prerogatives of authorship…Burke has some shrewdly perceptive as well as provocative things to say about writing..."
Christopher Norris, Cardiff University

Selected Publications:
The Death and Return of the Author (Edinburgh University Press, 1992)
Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodernism – a Reader (Edinburgh University Press, 1995)
Deadwater (Serpent’s Tail, 2002)
The Ethics of Writing: Authorship and Legacy in Plato and Nietzsche (Edinburgh University Press, 2008)

Contributed to:
The Big Book of Cardiff (contributor) (Seren, 2005)
Riptide: Vol 2 (contributor) (Dirt Pie Press, 2008)