Flann O'Brien: Contesting Legacies

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tensions closer to home Republicanism, the Gaelic tradition, the Dublin literary scene the collection reveals as outdated prejudice the dismissal of his talent as a matter of localised interest.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

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.