Flann O'Brien: Contesting Legacies

by Ruben Borg, Paul Fagan, Werner Huber

Overview

Employing a wide range of critical perspectives and new comparative contexts, Flann O’Brien: Contesting Legacies breaks new ground in Brian O’Nolan scholarship (he wrote his novels under the name of Flann O’Brien) by testing a number of popular commonplaces about this Irish (post-) Modernist author. Challenging the narrative that Flann O’Brien wrote two good novels and then retired to the inferior medium of journalism (as Myles na gCopaleen), the collection engages with overlooked shorter, theatrical, and non-fiction works and columns (‘John Duffy’s Brother’, ‘The Martyr’s Crown’, ‘Two in One’) alongside At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, and An Béal Bocht. The depth and consistency of O’Nolan’s comic inspiration that emerges from this scholarly engagement with his broader body of work underlines both the imperative and opportunity of reassessing O’Brien’s literary legacy.

Challenging the critical standard of O’Brien as a provincial writer, these essays reveal his writing as a space that uniquely complicates the old lines between stay-at-home conservatism and international experimentalism. Renegotiating O’Brien’s place in the European Avant-Garde alongside tensions closer to home – Republicanism, the Gaelic tradition, the Dublin literary scene – the collection reveals as outdated prejudice the dismissal of his talent as a matter of localized interest.

Finally, the contributors excavate O’Nolan’s oeuvre as fertile territory for a broad range of critical perspectives by confronting some of the more complex ideological positions tested in his writing. Employing perspectives from genetic criticism and cultural materialism to post-modernism and deconstruction, the essays gathered in this volume address with new critical rigor the author’s gender politics, his language politics, his parodies of nationalism, his ideology of science, and his treatment of the theme of justice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781782050766
Publisher:	Cork University Press
Publication date:	12/31/2014
Pages:	296
Product dimensions:	5.80(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Ruben Borg is a co-founder of the International Flann O'Brien Society.

Paul Fagan is a co-founder of the International Flann O'Brien Society.

Werner Huber was the host organizer of the 2011 Flann O'Brien Centenary Conference at the Vienna Centre for Irish Studies; the largest conference ever held on the author.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Textual Note ix

Notes on Contributors xi

Editors' introduction Ruben Borg Paul Fagan Werner Huber 1

Part I Broadening the Canon

1 Coming off the rails: the strange case of 'John Duffy's Brother' Keith Hopper 19

2 Irelands enough and time: Brian O'Nolan's science fiction Jack Fennell 33

3 (Probably posthumous): the frame device in Brian O'Nolan's short fiction Marion Quirici 46

4 'I've got you under my skin': 'John Duffy's Brother', 'Two in One' and the confessions of Narcissus Paul Fagan 60

5 Tall tales or 'petites histoires': history and the void in "The Martyr's Crown' and Thirst Thierry Robin 76

Part II Inter/National Contexts

6 In search of Mr Love; or, the internationalist credentials of 'Myles before Myles' Ute Anna Mittermaier 95

7 Myles na gCopaleen: a portrait of the artist as a Joyce scholar John McCourt 110

8 'A true story': The Third Policeman and the writing of terror Tom Walker 126

9 Myles na gCopaleen, Flann O'Brien and An Beat Bocht: intertextuality and aesthetic play Neil Murphy 143

10 'Did you put charcoal adroitly in the vent?': Brian O'Nolan and pataphysics Ondrej Pilny 156

Part III Critical Perspectives

11 'Banjaxed and bewildered': Cruiskeen Lawn and the role of science in independent Ireland Alana Gillespie 169

12 The trial of Jams O'Donnell: An Béal Bocht and the force of law Maebh Long 181

13 Brian O'Nolan: misogynist or 'ould Mary Anne'? Thomas Jackson Rice 195

14 The murders of Flann O'Brien: death and creation in At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, An Béal Bocht, and 'Two in One' Jennika Baines 207

Bibliography 219

Notes and References 231

Index 269