Download or read book Flann O Brien s Exorbitant Novels written by Thomas F. Shea and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In response to his predicament, he probes irregular sorts of coherence, different methods of amalgamation, and modified criteria of communication. Through permutations of phrase making, newerfangled arrangements of words, and transgressive metaphors, he discovers the animating charge of authoring innovation. O'Brien's last two novels, The Hard Life (1961) and The Dalkey Archive (1964), share several attributes. Both were written twenty-odd years after the earlier novels; both appear unusually tame for O'Brien; and both are often taken lightly as enervated, end-of-career efforts by an author who once had good stuff. However, O'Brien's unpublished letters to his friends Niall Montgomery and Niall Sheridan; his agents at A.M. Heath, Patience Ross and Mark Hamilton; and his new publisher during the 1960s, Timothy O'Keefe, reveal that these novels are intended as experiments in subterfuge.
Download or read book Flann O Brien Modernism written by Julian Murphet and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2014-07-31 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.
Download or read book Assembling Flann O Brien written by Maebh Long and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2014-01-02 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flann O'Brien - also known as Brian O'Nolan or Myles na gCopaleen - is now widely recognised as one of the foremost of Ireland's modern authors. Assembling Flann O'Brien explores the author's innovative and experimental work by reading him in relation to some of the 20th century's most important theorists, including Derrida, Agamben, Freud, Lacan and Žižek. Assembling Flann O'Brien offers a detailed study of O'Brien's five major novels – including At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman – as well as his plays, short stories, journalistic output and unpublished archival material. The book presents new theoretical perspectives on his works, exploring his compelling engagements with questions of the proper name, the archive, law, and desire, and the problems of identity, language, sexuality and censorship which acutely troubled Ireland's new state. Combining a wide range of contemporary theory with a sensitivity to the cultural and political context in which the author wrote, Maebh Long opens up entirely new aspects of Flann O'Brien's writings, and explores the ingenious and the problematic within his oeuvre.
Download or read book The Novels of Flann O Brien written by Thomas F. Shea and published by . This book was released on 1986 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Hard Life written by Flann O'Brien and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2024-11-19 with total page 133 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “wild, hilarious, fast moving, irreverent and comic” novel of growing up in turn-of-the-century Dublin from the acclaimed Irish author (New York Herald Tribune). When Finbarr’s mother dies, he and his older brother Manus are sent to their half-uncle’s house in Dublin. There, he is introduced to school—and the leather strap—at a benevolent Christian Brothers establishment. Evenings are spent listening to his uncle’s whisky-fueled discussions with a Jesuit priest, arguing the finer points of Roman Catholic theology and local politics. Finbarr follows Manus’s enterprising exploits—which include foregoing formal education to concoct money-making cons that prey on the gullible. As his uncle embarks on an ill-fated pilgrimage to Rome (where he is told to go to hell by the Holy Father himself), it remains to be seen if the life lessons Finbarr has absorbed set him on a path to righteousness and gainful employment . . . “A comic Irish novel that derives its effect from an absolutely deadpan approach, for the narrator is a small boy who, for the better part of the time, has only the foggiest notion of what he is describing. Young Finbarr commands a glorious version of the English language combined with a totally impartial view of adult actions. The two things produce remarkable results.” —The Atlantic “The conversation is a delight . . . and the atmosphere of a lower-middle-class family, with its cheerless, shabby, restricted way of life, is well done.” —Library Journal
Download or read book The Hard Life written by Flann O'Brien and published by Dalkey Archive Press. This book was released on 1994 with total page 186 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comic look at Irish life. The narrator is Finbarr, an orphan raised amid the odor of good whisky and bad cooking. With a mixture of admiration and unease he watches his brother, Manus, turn into a young man of business, successful enough to move to England.
Download or read book Unauthorized Versions written by José Lanters and published by CUA Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Certain moments in history, especially periods of cultural turmoil and political change, appear to be conducive to the writing of Menippean satire. Unauthorized Versions is the first integral study of Menippean satires written in Ireland in the three decades following the declaration of the Irish Free State in 1922. The book discusses works by Darrell Figgis, Eimar O'Duffy, Austin Clarke, Flann O'Brien, and Mervyn Wall in the context of political and social developments, particularly relating to economic policy, the role of the Church, and censorship. Mikhail Bakhtin defines Menippean satire as an unresolved dialogue between actual and/or implied voices designed to test a truth or philosophical idea. The Irish satirists of the first half of the twentieth century use medieval Ireland as a setting for addressing contemporary concerns, or borrow characters from medieval Irish texts that they place in a modern context. Each satire thus creates a series of dialogues: between the past and present; between characters who represent opposing values and ideologies; and between the older texts and their modern reworkings. Unauthorized Versions reveals the double bind at the core of every Menippean satire. Each writer discussed in the book expresses an awareness of the paradox of an author writing in the vacuum created by official censorship, seeking to engage his audience in the dethroning of the very authorities by whom he is deprived of his audience. By revealing his own ambiguous position, the satirist knowingly subverts his own authority along with that of his opponents. This study will appeal to students and scholars interested in Irish literature, genre studies, the reception of the Middle Ages, and the relationship between literature and history. Jos Lanters, associate professor of classics at the University of Oklahoma, will begin her position as associate professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in Fall 2000. She is author of Missed Understandings: A Study of Stage Adaptations of the Works of James Joyce and coeditor of Troubled Histories, Troubled Fictions: Twentieth-Century Anglo-Irish Prose. "Irish satire in the twentieth century has awaited a critic as intelligent and well-informed as Jose Lanters, whose Unauthorized Versions nicely complements Vivian Mercier's pioneering efforts. For several of the works she discusses, Lanters here provides the only substantial criticism they have received to date. Her approach combines sensitivity to form and expression with a constant attentiveness to historical context, while her study is anchored in a lucid and suggestive use of Bakhtin. Every library with an interest in Irish writing will want this book."--R. Brandon Kershner Alumni Professor of English, University of Florida "Lanters' well-argued volume will be a valuable resource for the study of modern Irish prose at the upper-division undergraduate level and above."--Choice Works discussed in Unauthorized Versions Darrell Figgis The Return of the Hero Eimar O'Duffy King Goshawk and the Birds The Spacious Adventures of the Man in the Street Asses in Clover Austin Clarke The Bright Temptation The Singing-Men at Cashel The Sun Dances at Easter Flann O'Brien At Swim-Two-Birds The Third Policeman Mervyn Wall The Unfortunate Fursey The Return of Fursey
Download or read book The Complete Novels of Flann O Brien written by Flann O'Brien and published by Everyman's Library. This book was released on 2008-01-08 with total page 826 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Flann O’Brien, along with Joyce and Beckett, is part of the holy trinity of modern Irish literature. His five novels–collected here in one volume–are a monument to his inspired lunacy and gleefully demented genius. O’Brien’s masterpiece, At Swim-Two-Birds, is an exuberant literary send-up and one of the funniest novels of the twentieth century. The novel’s narrator is writing a novel about another man writing a novel, in a Celtic knot of interlocking stories. The riotous cast of characters includes figures “stolen” from Gaelic legends, along with assorted students, fairies, ordinary Dubliners, and cowboys, some of whom try to break free of their author’s control and destroy him. The narrator of The Third Policeman, who has forgotten his name, is a student of philosophy who has committed murder and wanders into a surreal hell where he encounters such oddities as the ghost of his victim, three policeman who experiment with space and time, and his own soul (who is named “Joe”). The Poor Mouth, a bleakly hilarious portrait of peasants in a village dominated by pigs, potatoes, and endless rain, is a giddy parody aimed at those who would romanticize Gaelic culture. A naïve young orphan narrates the deadpan farce The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive is an outrageous satiric fantasy featuring a mad scientist who uses relativity to age his whiskey, a policeman who believes men can turn into bicycles, and an elderly, bar-tending James Joyce. With a new Introduction by Keith Donohue
Download or read book A History of the Modernist Novel written by Gregory Castle and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-06-25 with total page 549 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A History of the Modernist Novel reassesses the modernist canon and produces a wealth of new comparative analyses that radically revise the novel's history. It also considers the novel's global reach while suggesting that the epoch of modernism is not yet finished.
Download or read book Irish Modernism written by Edwina Keown and published by Peter Lang. This book was released on 2010 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the emergence, reception and legacy of modernism in Ireland. Engaging with the ongoing re-evaluation of regional and national modernisms, the essays collected here reveal both the importance of modernism to Ireland, and that of Ireland to modernism. This collection introduces fresh perspectives on modern Irish culture that reflect new understandings of the contradictory and contested nature of modernism itself.--
Download or read book Encyclopedia of the Novel written by Paul Schellinger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-04-08 with total page 838 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Encyclopedia of the Novel is the first reference book that focuses on the development of the novel throughout the world. Entries on individual writers assess the place of that writer within the development of the novel form, explaining why and in exactly what ways that writer is importnant. Similarly, an entry on an individual novel discusses the importance of that novel not only form, analyzing the particular innovations that novel has introduced and the ways in which it has influenced the subsequent course of the genre. A wide range of topic entries explore the history, criticism, theory, production, dissemination and reception of the novel. A very important component of the Encyclopedia of the Novel is its long surveys of development of the novel in various regions of the world.
Download or read book A Dictionary of the Avant Gardes written by and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-13 with total page 735 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes recognizes that change is a driving force in all the arts. It covers major trends in music, dance, theater, film, visual art, sculpture, and performance art--as well as architecture, science, and culture.
Download or read book You Bright and Risen Angels written by William T. Vollmann and published by Penguin Books. This book was released on 1988-12 with total page 660 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bold allegorical epic that hovers somewhere between the surreal and the incredible. Vollmann tells of the battle for power between the inventors and developers of electricity and the insect world.
Download or read book Flann O Brien Bakhtin and Menippean Satire written by M. Keith Booker and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 1995-10-01 with total page 184 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work applies Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of literary discourse and the concept of carnivalisation to the work of Flann O'Brien. The author emphasizes the political and social implications of the writings, arguing that O'Brien maintained a reflexive focus on language throughout his career.
Download or read book Hugging the Shore written by John Updike and published by Random House. This book was released on 2013-01-15 with total page 897 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD “Writing criticism is to writing fiction and poetry as hugging the shore is to sailing in the open sea,” writes John Updike in his Foreword to this collection of literary considerations. But the sailor doth protest too much: This collection begins somewhere near deep water, with a flotilla of short fiction, humor pieces, and personal essays, and even the least of the reviews here—those that “come about and draw even closer to the land with another nine-point quotation”—are distinguished by a novelist’s style, insight, and accuracy, not just surface sparkle. Indeed, as James Atlas commented, the most substantial critical articles, on Melville, Hawthorne, and Whitman, go out as far as Updike’s fiction: They are “the sort of ambitious scholarly reappraisal not seen in this country since the death of Edmund Wilson.” With Hugging the Shore, Michiko Kakutani wrote, Updike established himself “as a major and enduring critical voice; indeed, as the pre-eminent critic of his generation.”
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish Fiction written by Liam Harte and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020 with total page 698 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents essays by thirty-five leading scholars of Irish fiction that provide authoritative assessments of the breadth and achievement of Irish novelists and short story writers.
Download or read book Revolutionary Damnation written by Sheldon Brivic and published by Syracuse University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-11 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Irish fiction, the most famous example of the embrace of damnation in order to gain freedom—politically, religiously, and creatively—is Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus. His “non serviam,” though, is not just the profound rebellion of one frustrated young man, but, as Brivic demonstrates in this sweeping account of twentieth-century Irish fiction, the emblematic and necessary standpoint for any artist wishing to envision something truly new. Revolutionary fervor is what allowed a country with a population lower than that of Connecticut to produce so many of the greatest writers of the twentiety century. Because Irish culture was largely dictated by the Catholic Church and its conservatism, the most ambitious Irish writers, like Joyce, Beckett, and the ten others Brivic presents here, saw the advantages of damnation and seized them, rejecting powerful norms of church, state, and culture, as well as of literary form, voice, and character, to produce some of the most radical work of the twentieth century. Brivic links the work of writers such as Flann O’Brien, Patrick McCabe, and Anne Enright to the theories of Alain Badiou. His mathematical procedure for distinguishing what is truly innovative informs the progressive political and philosophical thrust that these writers at their best carry on from Joyce and Beckett to unfold a fierce tradition that extends into the twenty-first century.
