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This article discusses The Third Policeman through the lens of a dialectic of enchantment and disenchantment that is firmly anchored in the history of anthropological discourse on bureaucracy (Malinowski, Lévi-Strauss, Tambiah, Herzfeld, Graeber, Jones). From this angle, Flann O’Brien’s novel is examined as an aesthetic illustration of an essentially anthropological argument: although bureaucracy has been described as an eminently rational form of social systematisation, regulation, and control (since Weber), it also functions, paradoxically, as a symbolic site for irrationality and supernatural occurrences, haunted by madness, mystery, and delusion. The novel is intriguing partly due to its nonchalant, humorous entwining of seemingly incompatible imageries (in this case, magic and officialdom) – a strategy that proves effective not only for creating fantastic ambiguity, but also for reworking a predilect theme of bureaucratic fiction: the coexistence of rational and irrational modes of thinking, in an infinite circling around the absurd oddities of an incomprehensible Law and the impenetrable opacity of its higher powers.

In Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, a postmodernist novel avant la lettre, literary entities rewrite literary texts, including those in which they exist and I argue that they do so through metaleptic rewriting and in pursuit of different types of authorial justice, all of which are infelicitous. The novel’s intense self-reflexivity and intricate metafictional games create a foundation that is too fluid to sustain the weight of a heavy concept such as justice. Thus, myriad fictional worlds filled with authors wishing to impose what they deem to be fair in their own literary universe interact, intersect and overlap, allowing their justice-motivated characters to metaleptically transgress their ontological levels in order to undo the wrongs of their authors. Yet, in a novel that promotes itself as ‘a self-evident sham’, such attempts are mocked at every step and the quest for fairness is replaced by the thirst for authorial power.

This essay addresses a relatively untouched topic in the field of Brian O’Nolan / Flann O’Brien studies: the Irish-language “Tales from Corkadorky” vignettes published during 1941–42 in the “Cruiskeen Lawn” column O’Nolan wrote as Myles na gCopaleen for the Irish Times. This essay builds on the brief existing critical remarks about this series of columns by exploring, in unprecedented detail, Breandán Ó Conaire’s suggestion that the “Tales from Corkadorky” are modelled on the Sgéalta Mhuintir Luinigh (Munterloney Folktales) collected by Professor Éamonn Ó Tuathail and published in 1933. After summarising existing criticism, the essay presents the wider context of folklore collection for O’Nolan’s work in Irish, the background linking him to Ó Tuathail’s Sgéalta Mhuintir Luinigh, and proceeds to conduct a comparative reading of O’Nolan’s use of dialect features and themes from this source material in the “Tales from Corkadorky”. Facilitated by its analysis of the first tale to appear, the essay traces the origin and development of the tale format as it interacts with other recurring elements in “Cruiskeen Lawn”.

L’attention que l’on porte aux manuscrits des écrivains diffère de celle que l’on accorde aux brouillons de traduction. Le traducteur travaille et retravaille son texte afin de n’en publier qu’une seule version, celle à laquelle il aboutit en dernier, toutes les étapes intermédiaires étant considérées comme nécessaires mais sans grand intérêt. Il semblerait que les manuscrits des écrivains donnent à voir l’élaboration d’une écriture, la construction d’une œuvre, alors que les brouillons de traduction ne constituent qu’une série de versions erronées dont les corrections successives n’intéressent pas la critique. Or les brouillons de traduction servent aussi l’interprétation d’une œuvre, et apportent à la traductologie des éléments clés sur les liens entre pratique et théorie. C’est ce que je montre dans cet article en prenant pour exemples mes propres brouillons de traduction du premier roman de Flann O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds. Consignés dans des carnets et partiellement reproduits dans ma thèse, ces brouillons révèlent différents états du texte traduit, résultat d’un travail expérimental qui rend compte de mes trouvailles comme de mes errances. The attention given to writers’ manuscripts differs from that given to translators’ drafts. The translator works and writes his/her text in order to publish only one version, which (s)he ultimately completes; and all the intermediate steps that led to this final version are generally considered necessary but of little interest. It would thus seem that writers’ manuscripts show the elaboration of a piece of writing, the construction of a piece of work, whereas translation drafts constitute only a series of erroneous versions whose successive corrections do not interest the critics. However, it turns out that translation drafts also serve to interpret a piece of work and provide translation studies with key elements on the links between practice and theory. This is what I show in this article, using as examples my own translation drafts of Flann O’Brien’s first novel, At Swim-Two-Birds. Recorded in notebooks and partially reproduced in my thesis, these drafts reveal different states of the translated text and result from my experimental work, reflecting both my findings and my wanderings.

The article studies the characters of ”sons”, their spiritual fathers (patrons) and their parents. In ”Murphy”, and “At Swim-Two-Birds” the perception of ”Ulysses’s” characters of the “son” and the “father” has been revealed. The specificity and nature of the relationship between the “father” and the “son”, the complex, ambivalent feelings of both are studied. The search for a spiritual father, as well as the search for a spiritual son, were interpreted parodically in ”Murphy” and “At Swim-Two-Birds”. The feelings of the “father” to the “son” and vice versa are complex and contradictory, the ”father” has hidden motivations for the “son”. The issue of sonship makes the ”parents” feel a complicated complex and spectrum of feelings; there are also reasons that keep the ”sons” from reuniting with their spiritual father, their conflicting feelings about the substitute ”fathers”, the vested interest of the ”father” to be a successful heir. The motive for finding sonship, one of the key motives of the Joyce’s novel, is carnivalized in “Murphy” and “At Swim-Two-Birds”. The choice of an uncle for the role of father’s substitute in “Murphy” and ”At Swim-Two-Birds” can also refer to the characters of Hamlet and his uncle, which also creates an allusion to Stephen with his theory of Hamlet. The main character of “Murphy” dreams of the fate of Dante’s Belakva, the protagonist of ”At Swim-Two-Birds” receives reproaches in laziness from his uncle. S. Beckett and F. O’Brien conduct a counter- ”Ulysses’s” experiment: they leave in the vacuum the family relationships of the protagonist and his uncle, creating conditions for their rapprochement, but no reunion takes place. In the finale of ”Ulysses”, the “father” and the ”son” abandon the idea of reunion. “Murphy” ends up with the death of Murphy’, who overcomes the death of Christ, and in the pseudo-happy ending of the novel ”At Swim-Two-Birds” the relationship between the “father” and the ”son” becomes warm and close.

Review of Flann O’Brien: Problems with Authority, edited by Ruben Borg, Paul Fagan, and John McCourt (Cork University Press, 2017)

Brian Ó Nualláin is a man of many names and many voices. The narrative power he posseses is exemplified when comparing 'The Plain People of Ireland' segments of the Cruiskeen Lawn columns in The Irish Times, penned under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen, and the voice of the nameless narrator in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. Within these two works, the position of the intellectual in Irish society is portrayed through quite different lenses: the self-confident, perpetually correct Myles, and the timid, obsessively rational narrator. While both voices are erudite and authoritative, their positioning within the environments they inhabit could not be more different. This article examines the positioning of the 'intellectual narrator' in Ireland, as portrayed by the various voices of Ó Nualláin, focusing specifically on the tone utilised throughout the respective pieces to differentiate the social standing of the narrators from those they encounter. The mastery of language apparent in both 'The Plain People of Ireland' and The Third Policemansubverts the expected portrayal of a public intellectual, destabalising the inherent class politics that imbue both works without dismantling them all together.

A memoir of the Irish scholar John Wyse Jackson, who was a crucial pioneer in Flann O'Brien studies.

After an overview of the literature written in the Irish language, this thesis analyzes the English translation of the memoir An t-Oileánach (The Islandman) by Tomas O'Crohan with the interest in the pattern set by the author in describing the rural Irish life. Then the English translation of the comic novel An Béal Bocht (The Poor Mouth) by Flann O'Brien is investigated for intertextual references to O'Crohan's memoir as well as the elements of satire in the novel. The work of the author of the illustrations from The Poor Mouth, Ralph Steadman, is briefly described. The last chapter gives an overview of how fictional depiction of the Irish country people evolved during the 20th century.

James Fraser reports from Palimpsests: V International Flann O'Brien Conference (University College Dublin, 16–19 July 2019)

In fictional texts, personal names (and more generally proper nouns) are considered to be meaningful linguistic and cultural items since they often convey specific connotations to a literary text, and they constitute a challenge for translators since they are usually used to define the character itself, often from an ironic perspective. Translators can adopt different strategies (copy; naturalization; transcription; addition; phonological replacement; re-creation; cultural transplantation) but, as it often happens in translation, a significant part of specific connotations of the name is usually lost. Flann O’Brien resorts to a “creative” use of proper names, often comments them (De Selby, one of his characters, claims “to be in a position to state the physiological ‘group’ of any person merely from a brief study of the letters of his name”). This study analyses O’Brien’s use of proper nouns and the several solutions adopted by translators of his novels and short stories, suggesting some possible alternatives and highlighting the semantic potential of the examined proper names which is inevitably lost.

This thesis is a trilingual comparative literary study, analysing the works of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989), Máirtín Ó Cadhain (1906-1970), and Brian Ó Nualláin (1911-1966). This study will argue that the very particular form of literary modernism exhibited by these writers, one which appears in a transitionary state between late modernism and early postmodernism, is fundamentally shaped by the intersecting cultural forces of postcolonial Ireland. In line with the New Modernist Studies, the thesis aims to shed greater light on the particularities and peculiarities of Irish modernist literary production; of what specific forms it assumed in post-revolution Ireland; and how these forms differed across both majority and minoritized languages. Though it is now axiomatic in Irish Studies that the decline of the Irish language had profound consequences for Irish literary modernism at the turn of the twentieth century, the number of critical studies which engage with Irish literary space’s multilingual nature are few. If modernism is marked by a certain scepticism surrounding the signifier, the crisis of language which defines both modernist and postmodernist discourse is accentuated in the case of the uneasy bilingualism which marks Irish culture more generally. The thesis will ultimately suggest that a focus on the multilingual nature of Irish literary space, along with the contextualising of Irish modernist literature during the postcolonial moment, not only provides a greater understanding of Irish literary modernism but also helps critics in sketching the blurred borders between modernist and postmodernist aesthetics. 2024-02-20

The article studies the characters of ”sons”, their spiritual fathers (patrons) and their parents. In ”Murphy”, and “At Swim-Two-Birds” the perception of ”Ulysses’s” characters of the “son” and the “father” has been revealed. The specificity and nature of the relationship between the “father” and the “son”, the complex, ambivalent feelings of both are studied.The search for a spiritual father, as well as the search for a spiritual son, were interpreted parodically in ”Murphy” and “At Swim-Two-Birds”. The feelings of the “father” to the “son” and vice versa are complex and contradictory, the ”father” has hidden motivations for the “son”. The issue of sonship makes the ”parents” feel a complicated complex and spectrum of feelings; there are also reasons that keep the ”sons” from reuniting with their spiritual father, their conflicting feelings about the substitute ”fathers”, the vested interest of the ”father” to be a successful heir. The motive for finding sonship, one of the key motives of the Joyce’s novel, is carnivalized in “Murphy” and “At Swim-Two-Birds”. The choice of an uncle for the role of father’s substitute in “Murphy” and ”At Swim-Two-Birds” can also refer to the characters of Hamlet and his uncle, which also creates an allusion to Stephen with his theory of Hamlet. The main character of “Murphy” dreams of the fate of Dante’s Belakva, the protagonist of ”At Swim-Two-Birds” receives reproaches in laziness from his uncle. S. Beckett and F. O’Brien conduct a counter- ”Ulysses’s” experiment: they leave in the vacuum the family relationships of the protagonist and his uncle, creating conditions for their rapprochement, but no reunion takes place. In the finale of ”Ulysses”, the “father” and the ”son” abandon the idea of reunion. “Murphy” ends up with the death of Murphy’, who overcomes the death of Christ, and in the pseudo-happy ending of the novel ”At Swim-Two-Birds” the relationship between the “father” and the ”son” becomes warm and close., У статті вивчено образи «синів», їхніх духовних батьків (патронів) та рідних батьків. У «Мьорфі», «Про водоплавних» виявлено рецепцію «уліссівських» образів «сина» і «батька». Досліджено специфіку і характер взаємин «батька» і «сина», складні, двоїсті почуття обох.Пошуки духовного батька, так само як і пошуки духовного сина, у «Мьорфі» і «Про водоплавних» інтерпретовані пародійно. Почуття «батька» до «сина» і навпаки складні й суперечливі, «батько» має стосовно «сина» приховані мотивації. Питання синівства викликає в «батьків» складний комплекс і спектр почуттів; також є причини, які утримують «синів» від возз’єднання з духовним батьком, їхні суперечливі почуття щодо замісника «батьків», корисливий інтерес «батька» отримати успішного спадкоємця. Мотив пошуку синівства, один із ключових мотивів роману Дж. Джойса, карнавалізовано у «Мьорфі» і «Про водоплавних». Вибір дядька на роль замісника батька у «Мьорфі» і «Про водоплавних» теж може відсилати до образу Гамлета і його дядька, що також створює алюзію до Стівена з його теорією про Гамлета. Головний герой «Мьорфі» мріє про долю дантового Белакви, головний герой «Про водоплавних» отримує докори у ліні від дядька. С. Беккет і Ф. О’Брайєн проводять контр-«уліссівський» експеримент: залишають у вакуумі сімейних стосунків головного героя і його дядька, створюючи умови для їх зближення, однак возз’єднання не відбувається. У фіналі «Улісса» «батько» і «син» відмовляються від ідеї возз’єднання. «Мьорфі» завершується смертю Мьорфі, що обіграє смерть Христа, у псевдощасливому фіналі роману «Про водоплавних» стосунки «батька» і «сина» стають теплими й близькими.

One of the greatest challenges presented by the writings of Flann O’Brien is how to place them. For some he is the peer of Joyce and Beckett; for others his work is modernist pastiche; still others regard him as a reactionary satirist; while for another group he is the forerunner of American postmodernism. His work is often loosely labelled “surreal” or “absurd.” Yet O’Brien’s work is rarely read as avant-garde per se. This essay attempts to gain a new understanding of his oeuvre by reading a particular sliver of it – his manifestos – in the context of the historical avant-garde in Europe. Like many writers of his generation and the one previous, O’Brien wrote manifestos. One example is the founding editorial of the “anti-magazine” Blather (1934), whose “sardonic laugh” echoes the manifestos – or “anti-manifestos” – of Vorticism and Dada. The manifesto of intertextuality in At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), meanwhile, is more complex: while it appears to be in some ways a sincere statement about the novel as a whole, it is also intensely ironic and self-mocking. But that only deepens its relation to the manifestos of the preceding decades, which frequently undercut their own purpose in the midst of their performance. L’un des grands défis de l’œuvre de Flann O’Brien, c’est sa catégorisation. Pour certains, O’Brien est l’égal de Joyce et Beckett; pour d’autres, son œuvre est un pastiche moderniste; pour d’autres encore, c’est un satiriste réactionnaire tandis que pour certains, il est le précurseur du postmodernisme américain. Son œuvre est souvent dite, de manière très lâche, « surréaliste » ou « absurde ». Pourtant, on lit rarement l’œuvre d’O’Brien comme une œuvre d’avant-garde à part entière. Cet article tente de mieux comprendre son œuvre en lisant certains de ses écrits – ses manifestes – dans le contexte de l’avant-garde historique européenne. Comme beaucoup d’écrivains de sa génération et de la précédente, O’Brien écrivit des manifestes. Ainsi écrivit-il l’éditorial fondateur de l’ « anti-magazine » Blather (1934) dont le « rire sardonique » fait écho aux manifestes – ou « anti-manifestes » – du Vorticisme et du Dadaïsme. Le manifeste de l’intertextualité dans At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), quant à lui, est plus complexe : alors qu’il apparaît par certains côtés comme une déclaration sincère sur le roman en général, il est aussi profondément ironique et empreint d’autodérision. Mais cela montre d’autant mieux à quel point il est proche des manifestes des décennies précédentes qui minaient fréquemment leur propre objectif tout en le mettant en œuvre.

Yaeli Greenblatt reports fromActing Out: IV International Flann O’Brien Conference(Salzburg University, 17–21 July 2017)

Padraig O Mealoid proposes Francis Sylvester Mahony's alter-ego Father Prout as a potential model for the character of Father Kurt Fahrt, S.J., in Flann O'Brien's The Hard Life.

Artykuł skupia się na analizie podobieństw stylometryczncyh między Jamesem Joyce’em a Flannem O’Brienem i wskazuje, które z dzieł autora Sweeneya wśród drzew są najbardziej joyce’owskie w duchu. Przedstawiono w nim wyniki szeregu analiz ilościowych, a następnie na ich podstawie zaproponowano interpretacje literaturoznawcze. Krytycy twórczości Briana O’Nolana, publikującego pod pseudonimem Flann O’Brien, już od dawna sugerowali, że jest on "uczniem Joyce’a". Celem opisanych tu badań było dostarczyć argumentów stylometrycznych na poparcie tej tezy. W niniejszym artykule wskazano zatem fragmenty powieści O’Briena, wykazujące największe podobieństwa stylometryczne do dzieł Joyce’a, wykorzystując uzyskane ustalenia do wsparcia dotychczasowych analiz argumentami o świeżej, statystycznej precyzji. This paper examines the stylometric similarities between James Joyce and Flann O’Brien, demonstrating which works from the latter’s oeuvre are stylistically the most Joycean. We will outline the results of a series of quantitative enquiries focused specifically on Joyce and O’Brien, before offering a number of literary interpretations. It has long been argued that Brian O’Nolan, operating under the pseudonym of Flann O’Brien, is a disciple of James Joyce. This relationship remains a concern for scholars, and so our purpose here is to contribute some computational evidence to the discussion. We pinpoint those exact moments where O’Brien’s style is quantitatively similar to that of Joyce, using our results to re-engage existing arguments with renewed statistical precision.

El presente artículo analiza cómo la transgresión de fronteras característica de lo fantástico se origina en At Swim-Two-Birdsde Flann O'Brien a través de la metalepsis, figura retórica que acciona el resorte fantástico, desestabilizando la frontera entre la realidad y la ficción y generando una inquietud en el lector en la medida en que este se ve forzado a interrogarse sobre los límites de lo real y el estatus ontológico del autor y los personajes, así como su propio estatus. Asimismo, se hace hincapié en la instancia metafictiva y paródica de la novela en tanto que, como elementos constitutivos de At Swim-Two-Birds, tienen en común la transgresión de fronteras. This paper analyses how the transgression of boundaries, the characteristic of the fantastic, in Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds comesfrom the metalepsis, a rhetorical figure that activates the mechanism of the fantastic by destabilizing the boundary between reality and fiction and by creating a feeling of uncertainty in the reader since he/she is forced to ask himself/herself about the boundaries of reality and the ontological status of the author and the characters, as well as his/her own status. The paper also emphasizes the metafictional and parodic dimension of the novel as they, being constitutive elements of At Swim-Two-Birds, share the transgression of boundaries.

Introduction When Flann O'Brien's first novel At Swim-Two-Birds was published on 13th March 1939, it was immediately hailed as a work of genius. Admired by a long list of eminent personalities, among whom James Joyce topped the list for decades, it has been widely considered as O'Brien's finest literary creation along with The Third Policeman, written in 1940 and posthumously published in 1967. He also published The Poor Mouth (1941, originally in Irish and entitled An Beal Bocht), The Hard Life (1961), and The Dalkey Archive (1964), the latter being a rewriting of The Third Policeman with certain modifications and additions. Both At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman have been constant objects of study and research due to their innovative, early-postmodernist experimentation; perhaps even The Poor Mouth could fit into that category (1) given its politically idiosyncratic content which has attracted many commentators interested in the Irish nationalist movement during the 1940s. However, neither the rest of his novels nor his vast, long-running column entitled Cruiskeen Lawn, published almost daily from 1940 to 1966, have received sufficient critical appraisal compared to O'Brien's main novels. (2) Whereas At Swim-Two-Birds takes modernism to its limit through metafiction, exploring the intricacies of fiction and redefining the concept through the narration of an undergraduate Dublin student and novice writer, The Third Policeman molds them into postmodernism through "fragmentation and indeterminacy" (Hopper 2011: 13). Be that as it may, in the case of these two novels it seems that O'Brien's imaginative engine was working at maximum speed, whereas The Hard Life, succinctly introduced as "O'Brien's most normal picture of reality" (Clissman 1975: 272) or The Dalkey Archive seem to take a step backwards to certainly still comic, but allegedly inferior realism. Just a few years after the publication of At Swim-Two-Birds, many readers were claiming that this novel would remain as O'Brien's best work ever and that Cruiskeen Lawn, a project which O'Brien--under the pseudonym of Myles na gCopaleen was so intently committed to, had done nothing but to cut a brilliant and promising literary career short; not to mention the consideration of The Poor Mouth as being nothing but an empty satirical attack towards Irish language revival, thus lacking on artistic worth (Cronin 1990: 179). This issue has been a frequent source of doubt among scholars: why are At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman so avowedly brilliant compared to the rest of his output? Moreover, what are the reasons for this apparent loss of effervescence in his writing in later years? It is indeed not possible to address the problem in a straightforward way. There were many reasons for this apparent creative decline: personal and financial problems, official obstacles and social and cultural interventions. I contend, however, that one of the facts that might have caused O'Brien's fertile imagination to fall into disuse lies at the state of culture at that time in Ireland: (3) it was an essentially provincial country whose political determination to forge a culture and ideology of its own was not everybody's cup of tea--indeed, it was not O'Brien's -, and on top of that there were the typical problems that an Irish writer had to struggle with, such as censorship or a still illiterate audience. Ireland, a country whose recently achieved absolute independence--by means of the Constitution of 1937--was put into test by World War II, did actually flourish in terms of artistic and intellectual development during the conflict. Many important literary figures did their finest work during this time, such as Sean O'Faolain, Frank O'Connor, Elizabeth Bowen or Patrick Kavanagh. Why, then, given this impressively fertile literary background, did O'Brien's literary achievements seem to be moving backwards instead of forwards? This article will try to shed some light on the issue by following O'Brien's literary career starting at the 1930s with his university years and the publication of At Swim-Two-Birds, going all the way through his literary activities during the 1940s and 1950s, and ending up with his two last published novels, The Hard Life and The Dalkey Archive, taking special interest on the cultural atmosphere which impregnated those decades and how it could have affected O'Brien's creativity. …

Irish writer Brian O’Nolan, better known as Flann O’Brien (1911-1966), among other pseudonyms, published At Swim-Two-Birds, his first novel, in 1939. Early reviewers and contemporary critics alike have hailed it as a metafictional masterpiece, relevant for its mise en abyme narrative structure, lawless characters and mock-epic bravado. However, little attention has been devoted to how such an innovative design was originally conceived by its author in the first place. This article holds the belief that Huxley’s fourth novel, Point Counter Point (1928), stands as a major intertext among the many literary sources O’Brien might have perused when composing At Swim-Two-Birds. Apart from the presence of several direct references to Point Counter Point within O’Brien’s novel, Huxley’s text encompasses metafictional mechanisms that function in a similar way to those at work in O’Brien’s novel. Although there is no factual proof that O’Brien had read Huxley’s novel before he wrote At Swim-Two-Birds, this article endeavours to prove the existence of formal links between both metafictional assemblages by means of a detailed comparative analysis, ultimately concluding that O’Brien had indeed read Point Counter Point before setting out to write his first novel and found the self-referential features of Huxley’s work potentially productive. El escritor irlandés Brian O’Nolan, mejor conocido como Flann O’Brien (1911-1966), entre otros pseudónimos, publicó su primera novela, At Swim-Two-Birds, en 1939. Tanto los críticos de la época como los actuales han recibido la novela como una obra maestra de la metaficción, relevante por su uso de la estructura narrativa mise en abyme, además de destacar sus anárquicos personajes y su bravuconería en parodiar el género épico. No obstante, se ha prestado poca atención a cómo diseñó el autor un armazón narrativo tan original. Este artículo cree firmemente que la cuarta novela de Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point (1928), es un elemento intertextual de importancia entre las muchas obras en las que O’Brien se inspiró mientras componía At Swim-Two-Birds. Además de la existencia de referencias directas a Point Counter Point en la novela de O’Brien, el texto de Huxley hace uso de mecanismos metaficcionales similares a los diseñados por O’Brien. Aunque no existe prueba fehaciente de que O’Brien leyese la novela de Huxley antes de escribir At Swim-Two-Birds, este artículo trata de probar la existencia de conexiones formales entre ambos esqueletos metaficcionales llevando a cabo un análisis comparativo, con la conclusión final de que O’Brien había leído Point Counter Point casi con total certeza antes de escribir su primera novela e intuyó que las características autoreferenciales de la novela de Huxley podrían funcionar productivamente en su novela.

The years of the Second World War (1939-1945), a period known as The Emergency in Ireland, were pivotal for the development of the nation. Immediately after the outburst of the war in the continent, the Fianna Fáil cabinet led by Éamon de Valera declared the state of emergency and adopted a neutrality policy. To ensure this, the government imposed strict censorship control, especially on journalism and the media. The aim of the censorship system was to ensure that war facts were presented as neutrally as possible to avoid any potential retaliation from any of the belligerents. This censorship apparatus, however, affected many intellectuals of the time who felt that their freedom of expression had been restrained even more. One of these dissenting writers was Brian O’Nolan (1911-1966), better known as Flann O’Brien or Myles na gCopaleen. For more than twenty-six years (1940-1966), he wrote a comic and satirical column in The Irish Times entitled Cruiskeen Lawn. In his column, O’Brien commented on varied problems affecting Dublin and Ireland as a whole. One of the many topics he began discussing was precisely Ireland’s neutral position in the war. Therefore, this paper aims at examining Ireland’s neutral position in the war as seen through a selection of columns from Cruiskeen Lawn, devoting special attention to the oppression of censorship and the distracting measures developed by de Valera’s government.

At Swim-Two-Birds, la primera novela de Flann O'Brien publicada en 1939, ha sido generalmente considerada como la obra maestra de Flann O'Brien debido a su narración espontánea y su estilo experimental. Sin embargo, sus orígenes y proceso de composición no han sido analizados en profundidad. Este artículo examina los orígenes de At Swim-Two-Birds mediante un análisis de la producción literaria de O'Brien anterior a su primera novela, buscando conexiones entre la novela y los primeros escritos de O'Brien. El objetivo de este artículo es demostrar que las ideas y contenidos de At Swim-Two-Birds habían estado ya presentes en la mente de O'Brien mucho antes de que comenzase a escribir su primera novela

The essay articulates the specific translation problems encountered in translating Flann O’Brien’s ludic novel At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) into Hungarian in a framework of translation studies, also drawing on research on Joyce in translation. It tackles issues such as the necessity to invent literary styles for the book’s embedded style parodies, especially where the ‘originals’ are unknown in the TL culture; and the choice of idiom/ minor language(s) (Hiberno-English, as well as the Finn/Sweeny translatorese), for which a form of the TL that could function as a translated idiom had to be invented. As a possibility, harnessing Transylvanian Hungarian is explored – somewhat similarly to A. Oţoiu’s Romanian version of ASTB (2005), which also resorts to Transylvanian Romanian accents for rendering the same idiolects. Further points of interest are the issue of Gaelic red herrings and direct translations from the Gaelic; the possibilities of foreignizing language use, especially in the frame of Latinate pedantry; the strategies for rendering the (mis)quotes, literary references, Joycean allusions; and, last but far from least, the translators’ adventures with Flann O’Brien’s vicious puns. The essay also explores the four-handed translation process, resulting in a dialogic, and multilayered, Hungarian text that attempts to speak in as many styles and voices as the original.

Joyce a ses quarks, Flann O’Brien a sa théorie mollyculaire, faisant siens les propos d’Einstein selon lequel si une idée n’est pas au premier abord absurde elle n’a aucun avenir. De son vrai nom Brian O’Nolan (1911-1966), O’Brien s’avère être un auteur protéiforme féru de mystification, voyageur au cœur de l’absurdité apparente des choses. Romancier iconoclaste, chroniqueur acerbe au Irish Times sous le pseudonyme de Myles na Gopaleen, fonctionnaire atrabilaire d’une administration irlandaise kafkaïenne et surtout satiriste talentueux, son point de vue sur la littérature et la société de son époque est particulièrement original. Qualifié par Joyce d’auteur résolument comique, il offre néanmoins des angles d’analyse plus sombres et complexes quand on en vient à se pencher sur ce qui sous-tend sa philosophie du langage et son rapport au monde. Ainsi son chef-d'œuvre Le Troisième Policier est une longue prosopopée au carré : roman narré par un mort publié après la mort de l’auteur lui-même. Le présent ouvrage tend à éclairer de façon synthétique les méandres de la création d’un auteur qui entre whiskey et cigarettes parvint à faire de l’Irlande un théâtre où la farce le dispute à l’allégorie infernale et cocasse. Derrière les excès de la parodie, se dessine une réflexion subtile sur les mécanismes langagiers et la condition humaine. Typiquement irlandais par les thématiques qu’il aborde, de la culture du pub à son goût pour la satire hyperbolique swiftienne, O’Brien n’en demeure pas moins un écrivain universel abordant les confins de l’expérience de l’écriture et de l’incarnation. À la façon des bouffons shakespeariens, la sagesse d’O’Brien se révèle dans son apparente folie ou idiotie. Nulle surprise dès lors que la critique ait vu en lui tantôt un précurseur du postmodernisme, tantôt un écrivain du divertissement pascalien. Dans Swim-Two-Birds, Le Pleure-misère et Le Troisième Policier O’Brien (dé-)construit une cosmogonie portative où le statut de l’artiste est questionné avec force. Dans ce périple au bout du langage, merveilles et désillusions, réalité et fiction se confondent dans une spirale ironique aussi jubilatoire qu’intrigante. À Isabelle et au Pooka MacPhellimey Ars est celare artem, muttered Trellis, doubtful as to whether he had made a pun. Flann O’Brien, Swim-Two-Birds, p. 216. Die Welt ist alles, was der Fall ist (Le monde est tout ce que le hasard fait advenir). Ludwig Josef Wittgenstein, Tractatus logico-philosophicus, [S.11] 1.

Alana Gillespie reviews Flore Coulouma's monograph Diglossia and the Linguistic Turn: Flann O’Brien’s Philosophy of Language(Dalkey Archive Press, 2015).To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

Guest Editor Jack Fennell introduces this special issue of The Parish Review dedicated to 'Brian O'Nolan and the Culture Industry'.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

Ronan Crowley reviews Flann O’Brien & Modernism(2014), edited by Julian Murphet, Rónán McDonald, and Sascha Morrell.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

The aim of the article is to analyse the effects of the introduction of Censorship legislation on Irish culture. The analysis focuses on the reasons behind the introduction of the Censorship of Publications Act of 1929 and previous cases of literary ostracism. Then, it deals with anti-censorship journalism published in The Bell and the most controversial bannings, which increased the general awareness of the inadequacies of the Act and caused it to be lifted. Finally, the article examines the Act’s impact on Irish letters, especially the rise of fabulist fiction and the techniques used by writers such as Eimar O’Duffy, Flann O’Brien, and Mervyn Wall to circumvent and ridicule the censorship laws. The emergence of satirical fantasy writing can be seen as a reaction to oppressive legislation. As publishing realistic novels became nearly impossible, Irish writers expanded their range of expression to include non-mimetic fiction.

Introduzione a Flann O'Brien e al suo umorismo irlandese attraverso una delle sue opere meno conosciute ma estremamente significative

Guest Editor Gerry Smyth introduces The Parish Review 2.2. (Spring 2014), a special issue dedicated to the six columns Brian O'Nolan published inKavanagh’s Weekly: A Journal of Literature and Politicsbetween April and June 1952.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

Alana Gillespie reviews Flann O’Brien: Plays and Teleplays(2013),edited by Daniel Keith Jernigan and published by Dalkey Archive Press.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

The Parish Review interviews Michael O'Shaughnessy, who in the 1990s illustrated the Flamingo editions ofThe Third Policeman, The Poor Mouth, The Hard Life, The Dalkey Archive, Myles Away from Dublin, and The Best of Myles, and who graciously provided the cover image for this issue of TPR.

Katherine Ebury reviews Maebh Long's Assembling Flann O’Brien(Bloomsbury 2014).To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

International audience; Employing a wide range of critical perspectives and new comparative contexts, Flann O’Brien: Contesting Legacies breaks new ground in O’Brien scholarship 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 localised 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 rigour the author’s gender politics, his language politics, his parodies of nationalism, his ideology of science, and his treatment of the theme of justice.

This chapter will interrogate and assess the substantial body of journalistic work of Irish novelist Brian O’Nolan, considered to be one of the founding fathers of the postmodern novel, as exemplified in his classic works At-Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman. Locating his satirical journalism in the context of the Swiftian tradition from which it stems, O’Nolan’s journalism will be read in the societal content in which it was produced: namely 1940s, 1950s and 1960s Ireland, decades in which the country was marked by widespread censorship, increased Church influence on the affairs of state, economic stagnation and sexual repression. Concentrating on O’Nolan’s ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ column, which appeared regularly in the Irish Times from 1940 to 1966, under the pseudonym Myles na gCoplaeen, the incredible breath of of this body of work will be considered as ‘literary journalism’. In what sense does it confirm and subvert the ‘literary’ genre of journalistic writing? How is the work journalistic and/or literary? Indeed, does this amount to journalism at all or is ‘Cruiskeen Lawn’ primarily a literary intervention through the popular press by an ambitious writer of fiction? These questions will be considered though a reading of the hilarious journalistic output of O'Nolan, as he satirized the emerging Irish state in the pages of the Irish Times, a traditionally Unionist newspaper trying to reposition itself in the new realities of the fledgling Irish Republic.

This paper first provides a short overview of the history of the Irish language and proceeds to examine two sorts of attitudes displayed by Irish writers towards what Yeats called « his national language ». On the one hand, the members of the Irish Renaissance and of the Gaelic League participated both in the struggle for Independence and in the attempt to bring back Gaelic to life ; on the other hand, people like Joyce and Flann O'Brien took their distances with what they considered as a limitation just as damageable as the hegemonic domination of the English language. As a result, they sought to invent a new language which would subvert both the nationalist ideology and the colonial power. Today, contemporary Irish novelists follow in their tracks, using satire and other techniques to transcend the conflict between an « original » language and a « historical » language., Après un survol rapide du destin du gaélique à travers les siècles, cet article rappelle les attitudes contrastées des écrivains irlandais vis-à-vis de ce qui fut considéré dès le dix-neuvième siècle comme la langue nationale : d'un côté les tenants du Renouveau celtique, les militants de la Gaelic League, jouent un rôle non négligeable dans l'avènement de l'Indépendance et les tentatives de résurrection de la langue ; de l'autre, des auteurs comme Joyce ou Flann O'Brien voient dans le gaélique une arme idéologique qu'ils rejettent tout autant que l'hégémonie de la langue anglaise. Ils déploient donc dans leurs écrits des stratégies visant à subvertir tant l'idéologie nationaliste que la domination coloniale, inventant par là-même une voie/voix inédite. C'est cette voie qui est suivie aujourd'hui par nombre de romanciers contemporains, chez qui on retrouve à la fois la veine satirique inaugurée par Joyce et O'Brien et la recherche d'une langue encore inouïe capable de transcender le conflit entre langue d'origine et langue historique., Mikowski Sylvie. La place du gaélique dans le roman irlandais contemporain. In: Études irlandaises, n°26-2, 2001. La langue gaélique en Irlande hier et aujourd'hui, sous la direction de Danielle Jacquin . pp. 97-113.

The Gestalt Theory shows that an individual figure can only be understood in reference to its contextual background. In the domain of story lines, and more generally of sequential structuration, this puts the question of the relation between local facts and the framing whole, in particular in terms of teleology, that is the expectation of an end, be it in novels, in plays and in poems. Referring to the archeological levels in the text, levels to be found exemplified in the fairy tale and the epic, one may observe a whole spectrum of textual structuration, going from a commanding and imperative resolution of the plot and cf the text, to moderately deviant forms still conforming to the classical schemes of story-telling, to transgressive and subversive practices. Flann O'Brien's novels may seem to illustrate the latter category in which the normal reading operations concerning fragment v. whole are hampered, if not exploded ; which puts the question of the type of meaning finally constructed by the reader. Conversely, Howard Barker adopts another strategy in The Possibilities, a play in ten fragments which are conceived as absolutely autonomous though implicitly integrated in a demonstrative whole. One thus discovers that the specific nature of the relation established between fragment and whole— from linear and one-sided to reversible— offers the possibility of a critical insight into the actual workings of the text, and provides a central criterion, and a functional means, in view of the evaluation of what, in the final count, is being done to the reader., Morel Michel. Du fragment, du tout et de la clôture : Réflexions sur quelques stratégies artistiques contemporaines. In: Anglophonia/Caliban, n°5, 1999. Micro / Macro La partie et le tout. pp. 19-33.

This article studies the difficulties lived by Flann O'Brien in coping with the literary legacy of James Joyce.

This article examines how Joyce was reviewed in Ireland in the 1960s, concentrating in particular on the role of Flann O'Brien in Joyce reception.

Review of Flann O�Brien: Centenary Essays ed. Neil Murphy and Keith Hopper. Review of Contemporary Fiction, Fall 2011, Vol. 31, No. 3

This essay expands on recent discussions of the influence of early Irish nature poetry on Brian O'Nolan's writing, specifically with regard to it succinctness of language and restraint of tone. Focusing on representations of death, emotion, and self-reflection across the oeuvre, Ian Ó Caoimh explores the dangerous consequences of indulging one’s self or of excessive self-examination in O'Nolan's writing, a stance which is in constant conflict with the compulsion to strike that personal note in the first place.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

Guest-edited by Maebh Long (Assembling Flann O'Brien),The Parish Review2.1boasts articles by Ian Ó Caoimh, Jonathan O’Neill, Baylee Brits,and Thierry Robin, as well as a full inventory of Brian O’Nolan’s Libraryat Boston College, Carol Taaffe'sreviewof Dalkey's latest Flanncollection, Catherine Ahearn's account from the IFOBS conference in Rome,and reports from the far-flung corners of the IFOBS empire in TheParishBulletin.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

This essay shows how Brian O'Nolan's narrative structures contribute towards a distinctive fictional form of 'speculative fiction', which is bound up with a certain contempt for science, most especially physics, as well as a kind of obsession with the subject matter of physics. The 'Flann O'Brien' novels At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, and The Dalkey Archive are shown at once to embrace the ‘stuff’ of physics in their form and content whilst simultaneously rejecting the pretences of the opposite magisterium regarding the development of natural laws. Britts compares the allegory of the Irish writer in O’Nolan’s essay on Joyce, ‘A Bash in the Tunnel,’ to Albert Einstein's 'train embankment' thought experiment which is used to explain the relativity of simultaneity. Although these stories come from radically different traditions of theoretical praxis, this analysis reveals a speculative necessity in both of them, in the process constructing a link between physics and O’Nolan’s fiction that is not simply one of disavowal. The engagement and refutation of Einstein’s analogy that we find in the form of O’Nolan’s allegory of the writer crystallises the speculative task for fiction.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

International audience

Neil Murphy reports fromThe Flann O’Brien Centenary Symposium(Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 26 June 2011)

Guest-editor Jennika Baines introduces The Parish Review 1.2 (Winter 2013) and reflects on its organising theme of 'Flann O'Brien and the Archive.'To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

Twenty-Three Archival Aphorisms about Brian O'Nolan's archives at theJohn J. Burns Library, Boston College andSouthern Illinois University, Carbondale.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.

What might be considered the largest O’Nolan archive can be found in the Burns Library collection at Boston College. This archive holds papers, letters, and books, but the focus is also on the artefacts of this manifold writer’s life. Boston College has showpieces such as the Underwood typewriter on which Flann O’Brien’s novels and Myles na gCopaleen’s columns were written. There is Myles’s famous wide-brimmed black hat and his coat. There is Brian O’Nolan’s violin and his passport. Marion Quirici has worked extensively in these archives as a former student at Boston College. Quirici argues in her article ‘Brian O’Nolan in the Archive: Assembling Myles and Flann’ that there are archives and unconsulted writings at the University at Buffalo that are waiting to be discovered. She encourages us all to find what might be undiscovered material in our own university libraries and to reclaim this work for the future of O’Nolan studies.To read the article, click Download or View PDF.