Flann O Brien: Contesting Legacies

Author/Contributor(s):	Borg, Ruben ; Fagan, Paul ; Huber, Werner
Publisher:	Cork University Press
Date:	12/01/2014
Binding:	Hardcover
Condition:	NEW

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 Beal 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tensions closer to home Republicanism, the Gaelic tradition, the Dublin literary scene the collection reveals as outdated prejudice the dismissal of his talent as a matter of localized interest.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."