Flann O'Brien : problems with authority /
Borg, Ruben,editor.
Fagan, Paul,editor.
McCourt, John,1965-editor.
Recent years have witnessed a series of shifts in the reception of Brian O'Nolan's work, with the publication of collected short stories and dramatic texts and a systematic critical reappraisal of once marginal titles in the author's canon. The vast collections of O'Nolan's correspondence, manuscripts and drafts housed in Illinois, Boston, and Texas, - as well as The Irish Times online digital archive - have given rise to genetic and cultural materialist approaches that seek to explore the borders of authorship and authority in O'Nolan's ever-expanding oeuvre. And while longer-running critical conversations continue to be finessed about the ways in which O'Nolan's texts are shaped by towering twentieth-century figures such as Joyce and Beckett, the increasingly international contexts in which O'Nolan is being read invite us to reconsider his profile as a satirist, a local comedian, a critic of provincial attitudes, a formal innovator and a powerful, inimitable voice in the twentieth-century avant-garde. As the boundaries of his body of work continue to be redrawn, O'Nolan's writing appears to be constantly repositioning itself between local and international perspectives, displaying an uncanny knack for comic doubling and self-contradiction, embracing the innovative spirit of the times, yet unmasking its pretentions.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 255-314) and index.
Editors' introduction / Ruben Borg, Paul Fagan, John McCourt -- part I. 'Neither popular nor profitable' : O'Nolan vs. The plain people -- 1. 'Irreverence moving towards the blasphemous' : Brian O'Nolan, Blather and Irish popular culture / Carol Taaffe -- 2. 'No more drunk, truculent, witty, Celtic, dark, desperate, amorous paddies!' : Brian O'Nolan and the Irish stereotype / Maebh Long -- 3. Lamhd láftar and bad language : bilingual cognition in Cruiskeen lawn -- Maria Kager -- 4. 'The half-said thing' : Cruiskeen lawn, Japan and the Second World War / Catherine Flynn -- 5. Physical comedy and the comedy of physics in The THIRD POLICEMAN, The Dalkey archive and Cruiskeen lawn / Katherine Ebury -- part II. Mixed inks : O'Nolan vs. his peers -- 6. 'Widening out the mind' : Flann O'Brien's 'wide mind' between Joyce's 'mental life' and Beckett's 'deep within' / Dirk Van Hulle -- 7. Phwat's in a nam? : Brian O'Nolan as a late revivalist / Ronan Crowley -- 8. Fantastic economies : Flann O'Brien and James Stephens / R.W. Maslen -- 9. The ideal and the ironic : incongruous Irelands in An béal bocht, No laughing matter and Ciarán Ó Nualláin's Óige an Dearthár / Ian Ó Caoimh -- 10. More 'gravid' than gravitas : Collopy, Fahrt and the Pope in Rome / John McCourt -- part III. Gross impieties : O'Nolan vs. the sacred texts -- 11. 'A scholar manqué'? : further notes on Brian Ó Nualláin's engagement with early Irish literature / Louis de Paor -- 12. In defence of 'gap-worded' stories : Brian O'Nolan on authority, reading and writing / Alana Gillespie -- 13. Reading Flann with Paul : modernism and the trope of conversion / Ruben Borg -- 14. The Dalkey archive : a Menippean satire against authority / Dieter Fuchs -- 15. 'Walking forever on falling ground' : closure, hypertext and the textures of possibility in The third policeman / Tamara Radak.
Recent years have witnessed a series of shifts in the reception of Brian O'Nolan's work, with the publication of collected short stories and dramatic texts and a systematic critical reappraisal of once marginal titles in the author's canon. The vast collections of O'Nolan's correspondence, manuscripts and drafts housed in Illinois, Boston, and Texas, - as well as The Irish Times online digital archive - have given rise to genetic and cultural materialist approaches that seek to explore the borders of authorship and authority in O'Nolan's ever-expanding oeuvre. And while longer-running critical conversations continue to be finessed about the ways in which O'Nolan's texts are shaped by towering twentieth-century figures such as Joyce and Beckett, the increasingly international contexts in which O'Nolan is being read invite us to reconsider his profile as a satirist, a local comedian, a critic of provincial attitudes, a formal innovator and a powerful, inimitable voice in the twentieth-century avant-garde. As the boundaries of his body of work continue to be redrawn, O'Nolan's writing appears to be constantly repositioning itself between local and international perspectives, displaying an uncanny knack for comic doubling and self-contradiction, embracing the innovative spirit of the times, yet unmasking its pretentions.
O'Brien, Flann, 1911-1966