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Flann O'Brien & Modernism brings a much-needed refreshment to the state of scholarship on this increasingly recognised but still widely misunderstood 'second generation' modernist. Rather than construe him as a postmodernist, it correctly locates O'Brien's work as the product of a late modernist sensibility and cultural context. Similarly, while there should be no doubt of his Irishness, and his profound debts to Irish language, history and culture, this collection seeks to understand O'Brien's nationally sensitive achievement as the work of an internationalist whose preoccupations reflect global modernist trends.The distinct themes and concerns tracked in Flann O'Brien & Modernism include characterization in branching narrative forms; the ethics and paradoxes of naming; parody and homage; lies and deception; theatricality; sexuality; technology and transport; and the inevitable matter of drink and intoxication. Taken together, these specific topics construct a mosaic image of O'Brien as an exemplary modernist auteur, abreast of all the most salient philosophical and technical concerns affecting literary production in the period immediately before and after World War Two.
Sommario
Acknowledgements
Contributors
Introduction
Rónán McDonald, University of New South Wales, Australia and Julian Murphet, University of New South Wales, Australia
Chapter 1 Making Evil, with Flann O'Brien
Sean Pryor, University of New South Wales, Australia
Chapter 2 Mythomaniac modernism: lying and bullshit in Flann O'Brien
John Attridge, University of New South Wales, Australia
Chapter 3 'The outward accidents of illusion': O'Brien and the Theatrical
Stefan Solomon, University of Sydney, Australia
Chapter 4 The Ghost of 'Poor Jimmy Joyce': A Portrait of the Artist as a Reluctant Modernist
Stephen Abblitt, La Trobe University, Australia
Chapter 5 'Do You Know What I'm Going to Tell You?': Flann O'Brien, Risibility and the Anxiety of Influence
David Kelly, University of Sydney, Australia
Chapter 6 An Béal Bocht, Translation and the Proper Name
Maebh Long, University of the South Pacific, Fiji
Chapter 7 Ploughmen Without Land: Flann O'Brien and Patrick Kavanagh
Joseph Brooker, University of London, United Kingdom
Chapter 8 Flann O'Brien's Ulysses: Marginalia and the Modernist Mind
Dirk Van Hulle, University of Antwerp, Belgium
Chapter 9 'Truth is an Odd Number': Flann O'Brien and Infinite Imperfection
Baylee Brits, University of New South Wales, Australia
Chapter 10 'An astonishing parade of nullity': Nihilism in The Third Policeman
Rónán McDonald, University of New South Wales, Australia
Chapter 11 Flann O'Brien and Modern Character
Julian Murphet, University of New South Wales, Australia
Chapter 12 'No unauthorized boozing': Flann O'Brien and the Thirsty Muse
Sam Dickson
Chapter 13 Soft drink, hard drink, and literary (re)production in Flann O'Brien and Frank Moorhouse
Sascha Morrell, University of New England, Australia
Chapter 14 Flann O'Brien's Aestho-Autogamy
Mark Steven, University of New South Wales, Australia
Chapter 15 Modernist Wheelmen
Mark Byron, University of Sydney, Australia
Info autore
Julian Murphet is Professor of Modern Film and Literature at the University of New South Wales, Australia. He is the author of
Multimedia Modernism (2009),
Literature and Race in Los Angeles (2001), co-author of
Narrative and Media (2005), and co-editor of
Literature and Visual Technologies (2003).
Rónán McDonald holds the Australian Ireland Fund Chair in Modern Irish Studies and is Director of the Global Irish Studies Centre at the University of New South Wales, Australia. His recent publications include
Tragedy and Irish Literature: Synge, O'Casey, Beckett (2002),
The Cambridge Introduction to Samuel Beckett (2006), and a special issue of the
Yearbook of English Studies (2005) on 'Irish Writing since 1950'.
Sascha Morrell is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of New England, Australia. She studied at the University of Cambridge and has broad interests in 19th and early-20th Century American, British and 'Antipodean' literatures.
Riassunto
Flann O'Brien & Modernism brings a much-needed refreshment to the state of scholarship on this increasingly recognised but still widely misunderstood 'second generation' modernist. Rather than construe him as a postmodernist, it correctly locates O'Brien's work as the product of a late modernist sensibility and cultural context. Similarly, while there should be no doubt of his Irishness, and his profound debts to Irish language, history and culture, this collection seeks to understand O'Brien's nationally sensitive achievement as the work of an internationalist whose preoccupations reflect global modernist trends.
The distinct themes and concerns tracked in Flann O'Brien & Modernism include characterization in branching narrative forms; the ethics and paradoxes of naming; parody and homage; lies and deception; theatricality; sexuality; technology and transport; and the inevitable matter of drink and intoxication.
Taken together, these specific topics construct a mosaic image of O'Brien as an exemplary modernist auteur, abreast of all the most salient philosophical and technical concerns affecting literary production in the period immediately before and after World War Two.
Relazione
The essays in the collection do a good job of showing how O'Brien's work should be read within the context of trans-European modernism. Times Literary Supplement (reviewed by Jon Day)
