Flann O'Brien, Dickens and Joyce: Form, Identity and Colonial Influences

One might assume Joyce had trouble with objectivity when it concerned the setting of Ireland because Dublin would prove to be his only topic. According the editors of the Norton Anthology of Literature, “No writer has ever been more soaked in Dublin, its atmosphere, its history, its topography. He devised ways of expanding his account of the Irish capital, however, so that they became microcosms of human history, geography, and experience.” (Greenblatt, 2277) In both “Araby” and “The Dead” the climax reveals an epiphany of sorts that the main characters experience and each realize his actual position in life and its ultimate permanency. The narrator in “Araby” is a young man who lives in an uninteresting area and dreary house in Dublin. The only seemingly exciting thing about the boy’s existence is the sister of his friend Mangum that he is hopelessly in love with; “…her name was like a summons to all my foolish blood.” (Joyce 2279) In an attempt to impress her and bring some color into his own gray life, he impulsively lies to her that he is planning on attending a bazaar called Arab.

However, ultimately this only ends in h... ... middle of paper ... ...trayed by Johnston. However, Fool’s Sanctuary, not only serves as an exploration of the unique characteristics of the Irish people, it also serves as an explanation. It is an explanation, offering an insight into why certain traits are unique to the Irish psyche, what the traits could be attributed to and how they ultimately lead to self-destruction. Jennifer Johnston’s careful and powerful depiction of Ireland at the brink of war, is like a magnifying glass and when examined, it essentially reveals a unique portrayal of the Irish psyche. The Student May Wish to begin the essay with one or more of the quotes below: Out of Ireland we have come.

Wells in a review of the novel in the New Republic wrote, "by far the most living and convincing picture that exists of an Irish Catholic upbringing." Joyce's focus on betrayal was a consequence of the downfall in 1889of the Irish leader Charles Stuart Parnell when he was attacked by the Irish Catholic Church when named a correspondent in a divorce case. This treachery left an indelible mark on Joyce's mind. 	Joyce literary talent emerged at Belvedere as he began to read the work of European writers and in particular the Norwegian dramatist, Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906). At the age of eighteen, Joyce wrote an essay entitled "Ibsen's New Drama" which was published in the Fortnightly Review.

Shakespeare once wrote, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” I would have to disagree with Juliet’s assertion that a name is a meaningless convention, and I think Brian Friel would as well. It is a concept addressed in his play Translations, set at a time of change for his native Ireland, when the country itself is on the cusp of submission to the imperialism of England. Two significant colonial events are taking place: the implementation of the National School System which replaced locally-run hedge schools like the one in which the play is set, as well as the remapping of Ireland and anglicising of place names by the British. To translate something means to change it from one condition to another, or adapt it from one system or language into another; indeed this metaphor can be applied to this play but also to Irish history.

How Friel Involves his Audience in the Conflict Between Coloniser and Colonised in his Play Translations The play 'translations' by Brian Friel is set in Ireland in 1833. During this time, the area was undergoing colonisation by the English and the play represents a microcosm of the events occurring all over the nation at the time. The consequence of this colonisation was inevitably that the Gaelic language native to Ireland was eventually lost and replaced by English. Friel develops a pre-disposed bias towards the colonised through the characterisation of both Hugh and Lancey and this creates an allegiance between the audience and the Hedge school natives. Hugh's humerous persona is in stark contrast to Lancey's dictatorial character.

Colonial Representations of India in Prose Fiction As in representations of the other British colonies, India was used by colonial novelists as a tool of displacement of the individual and re-affirmation of the metropolitan whole. There are three methods by which this effect is achieved. The first method displays an unqualified reliance on a culture too remote to be approached except physically: a hero or protagonist in a pre-mutiny novel is at liberty to escape to India at a moment of crisis, rearrange his life to his advantage and return to a happy ending and the establishment of a newly defined metropolitan life. Dobbin of Thackeray's Vanity Fair (1848) and Peter Jenkins of Gaskell's Cranford (1853) exemplify this well. Even the child Bitherstone of Dickens' Dombey and Son (1848) regards India as his salvation.

Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds is a multifarious work of purpose, at once an experimental narrative that directly responds to James Joyce's modernist work (acting as a forerunner of post-modernist thought), and a study on the tortuous challenges facing the dichotomies of Irish culture. At Swim is at its most understated, a text of parodies. O'Brien expertly strings together the many layers of his novel's world to express a slew of critical observations about modernist ideology and realism, as well as exposing a necessary dialogue on the formation and perception of Irish culture. A third major aspect of At Swim-Two-Birds lies closer to O'Brien's own life experience: this is a novel of Irish identity. The Irish identity that O'Brien illustrates, however, is not easily explained.

The premise of this now seminal study is that Yeats was a poet of decolonisation, a muse expressing the Irish experience of the dominant colonial power of Britain. Rather than reading Yeats’s poetry from the conventional perspective of high European modernism Said explains that “he appears to me, and I am sure many others in the Third World, to belong naturally to the other cultural domain” (3). Using this as his point of departure, Said enters into a line of argument which claims that Yeats was a central figure in debating and asserting an overt drive towards the construction of a national Irish identity as a vital act of decolonisation. Further, Said places Yeats within a global framework of anti-Imperialism, drawing parallels between the Irish poet and Third world writers and theorists such as Fanon, Neruda and Achebe. Though an incredibly influential essay, the reverberations of which may still be felt in Inventing Ireland and other texts, it is also a work that demands close analysis and is replete with short-sighted and ill-informed ideas.

Yeats Speech Assessment – Jack El Khoury In his poetry Yeats combines a commitment to Irish themes with an explanation of his own psyche and an account of his own spiritual quest – Seamus Heaney. In light of your critical study, how does this statement resonant with your own interpretation of Easter 1916 and at least ONE other poem set for study? Good morning Mrs Jacobs and Mr Lynch, Today I am here to speak about William Butler Yeats, a renowned Irish poet, who within his poetry, is known to present an explanation of his own psyche in conjunction with the Irish themes that define his works. But where exactly do we see this? Well, I believe that this is evident through the use of language and other literary devices, in poems such as ‘Easter 1916’ and ‘Leda and the Swan’, which convey the significance of Yeats’ message as he examines the changes that were developing in Ireland during his era.

In the following paragraphs, short stories from “Dubliners” written by James Joyce and an extract of the poem “La Cuve (The Vat)” by Charles Baudelaire will be discussed and analyzed to illustrate how Dublin and Paris are described as city of paralysis and city of darkness respectively. James Joyce chose Dublin not only as the setting of his short stories, more importantly, he wanted to “show the paralysis of the psyche, society and politics of Ireland”. (Daniels, 2) In the “Selected Letters of James Joyce”, Joyce clearly suggested that “[his] intention was to write a moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because that city seemed to [him] the centre of paralysis. (Thwaites, 14). Colonized by Britain for 800 years, Dublin and its people were constantly under political and religious oppression.