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 entire novel is deliberately isolated within the arena of Ireland and nearly every aspect of At Swim reflects upon the complexity of “Irishness”.
Since the late nineteenth century up to the 1930s in which At Swim takes place, various strands of Irish Revivalism had been rebelling against the anglicization of the country with a heavy cultural impact. The Revivalist Movement, attempting to reclaim a pre-colonial Gaelic identity, energized the celebration of Irish myth and legend and became enormously popular. Running parallel to the Revivalist Movement was a similar Irish Language Movement, which publicized texts and narratives focused on professedly Gaelic subjects. Groups focused on the task propped up Irish warriors and heroes as role models, figures of manhood and moral virtue, which added further to the re-evaluation of contemporary Irish identity around this time.
Opposing the Cultural Protectionists who would preserve an “Irish” Ireland, ...
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...he Novel: Flann O'Brien's At Swim-Two-Birds.” Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Summer, 1993), pp. 208-229. Hofstra. Web. April 20, 2014.
Evans, Eibhlin. “A Lacuna in the Palimpsest.” Critical Survey, Vol. 15, No. 1, Anglo-Irish Writing (2003), pp. 91-107. Berghahn Books. Web. April 20, 2014.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Penguin Books, 2002. Digital File.
McMullen, Kim. “Culture as Colloquy: Flann O'Brien's Postmodern Dialogue with the Irish Tradition.” NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, Vol. 27, No. 1 (Autumn, 1993), pp. 62-84. Duke University Press. Web. April 24, 2014.
O'Grady, Thomas B. “High Anxiety: Flann O'Brien's Portrait of the Artist.” Studies in the Novel, Vol. 21, No. 2 (summer 1989), pp. 200-208. University of North Texas. Web. April 20, 2014.
O'Brien, Flann. At Swim-Two-Birds. Dublin: Dalkey Archive Press, 2012. Print.
Asals, Frederick. Flannery O'Connor : The Imagination of Extremity. University of Georgia Press; Reissue edition. Athens, Georgia, 2007.
Included within the anthology The Penguin Book of Irish Fiction,1[1] are the works of great Irish authors written from around three hundred years ago, until as recently as the last decade. Since one might expect to find in an anthology such as this only expressions and interpretations of Irish or European places, events or peoples, some included material could be quite surprising in its contrasting content. One such inclusion comes from the novel Black Robe,2[2] by Irish-born author Brian Moore. Leaving Ireland as a young man afforded Moore a chance to see a great deal of the world and in reflection afforded him a great diversity of setting and theme in his writings. And while his Black Robe may express little of Ireland itself, it expresses much of Moore in his exploration into evolving concepts of morality, faith, righteousness and the ever-changing human heart.
Flannery O’Connor was born on March 25, 1925 in Georgia. She was the only child to her parents, Edward and Regina O’Connor. Two years away from Flannery’s adulthood , her father passed away due to a rare disease, lupus. At the time of her father’s death O’Connor was in Milledgeville, Ga. It can be inferred that she was able to cope up with her father’s death very soon as she didn’t speak of his death much and also resumed to be an active part of her high school’s extra-curricular activities such as painting, English club and also band. A year after her father’s demise she graduated from high school and enrolled herself in Georgia State College to do major in English and sociology. It was during this period that she adapted the name ‘Flannery’. After getting bachelor degree from college she relocated to Iowa City where she attended University of Iowa and also applied for a job as teacher within the campus of her university. In the year of 1947, she eventually obtained her Masters degree in the field of Fine Arts. In spite of the fact that she obtained her Masters degree in 1947, her first work, “The Geranium” was published a year before that and it was just the dawn of her fame. It was merely an origination of the classics that followed later on. Lupus was genetically acquired by O’Connor from her father. Things were going well until end of 1950 in which she was struck by a severe lupus attack. O’Connor was determined about her writing and thus , even such a huge attack didn’t divert her attention off her passion of writing. There was no looking back for her as she kept on publishing her works. In point of fact , it was only after her attack, she produc...
Scott, Nathan A., Jr. "Flannery O'Connor's Testimony." The Added Dimension: The Art and Mind of Flannery O'Connor. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman and Lewis A. Lawson. New York: Fordham UP, 1966. 138-56.
The impact of an author’s life on their writing is vast. Many people do not see the large influence of an author’s childhood on their writings, but it plays a major role. The life of Flannery O’Connor is no exception to this. The great Catholic lifestyle of her parents helped persuade her writing of, “A Good Man is Hard to Find.”
The first words of the book convey a parrot that spoke “a language which nobody understood”, and Edna’s husband “had the privilege of quitting [the parrot] when [it] ceased to be entertaining” (11). In the same light, Edna speaks of and wishes for a life that nobody apprehends. Her husband also possesses the moral, objectifying liberty to quiet Edna when she did not provide leisure, as one can turn off a song once it grows into a tedious nuisance. A further exemplification comes about when Old Monsieur Farival, a man, “insisted upon having [a] bird. . . consigned to regions of darkness” due to its shrieking outside (42). As a repercussion, the parrot “offered no more interruption to the entertainment” (42). The recurrence of the parrot evolves Edna’s state of stagnance as a consequence of being put to a halt by others despite her endeavor of breaking free. Ultimately, as Edna edges out towards the water to her death, a bird is depicted with “a broken wing” and is “beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water” (159). This recurrence parallels the beaten bird to a suffering Edna. She has “despondency [that] came upon her there in the wakeful night” that never alleviates (159). Dejection is put to action when Edna wanders out into the water, “the shore. . . far behind her” (159). Motif of birds articulates her suicide by its association with
Irish American Magazine, Aug.-Sept. 2009. Web. The Web. The Web. 06 May 2014.
Stoddard, Eve Walsh. “Home and Belonging among Irish Migrants: Transnational versus Placed Identities in The Light of Evening and Brooklyn: A Novel.” Eire-Ireland 47.1 & 2 (Summer 2012): 147-171.
In James Joyce’s Dubliners, the theme of escape tends to be a trend when characters are faced with critical decisions. Joyce’s novel presents a bleak and dark view of Ireland; his intentions by writing this novel are to illustrate people’s reasons to flee Ireland. In the stories “Eveline, “Counterparts”, and the “Dead”, characters are faced with autonomous decisions that shape their lives. This forlorn world casts a gloomy shadow over the characters of these stories. These stories are connected by their similar portrayal of Ireland. They clearly represent Joyce’s views on people’s discontent with Ireland.
A collection of short stories published in 1907, Dubliners, by James Joyce, revolves around the everyday lives of ordinary citizens in Dublin, Ireland (Freidrich 166). According to Joyce himself, his intention was to "write a chapter of the moral history of [his] country and [he] chose Dublin for the scene because the city seemed to [b]e the centre of paralysis" (Friedrich 166). True to his goal, each of the fifteen stories are tales of disappointment, darkness, captivity, frustration, and flaw. The book is divided into four sections: childhood, adolescence, maturity, and public life (Levin 159). The structure of the book shows that gradually, citizens become trapped in Dublin society (Stone 140). The stories portray Joyce's feeling that Dublin is the epitome of paralysis and all of the citizens are victims (Levin 159). Although each story from Dubliners is a unique and separate depiction, they all have similarities with each other. In addition, because the first three stories -- The Sisters, An Encounter, and Araby parallel each other in many ways, they can be seen as a set in and of themselves. The purpose of this essay is to explore one particular similarity in order to prove that the childhood stories can be seen as specific section of Dubliners. By examining the characters of Father Flynn in The Sisters, Father Butler in An Encounter, and Mangan's sister in Araby, I will demonstrate that the idea of being held captive by religion is felt by the protagonist of each story. In this paper, I argue that because religion played such a significant role in the lives of the middle class, it was something that many citizens felt was suffocating and from which it was impossible to get away. Each of the three childhood stories uses religion to keep the protagonist captive. In The Sisters, Father Flynn plays an important role in making the narrator feel like a prisoner. Mr. Cotter's comment that "… a young lad [should] run about and play with young lads of his own age…" suggests that the narrator has spent a great deal of time with the priest. Even in death, the boy can not free himself from the presence of Father Flynn (Stone 169) as is illustrated in the following passage: "But the grey face still followed me. It murmured; and I understood that it desired to confess something.
Whitt, Margaret. Understanding Flannery O’Connor. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1995. 47-48, 78. Print.
Ronsley, Joseph, ed., Myth and Reality in Irish Literature, Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Canada, 1977
Flann O'Brien was a writer obsessed with both nationhood and language, and saw the two as inextricably entwined. Nowhere was this more apparent than in his writings under the pseudonym of Myles na Gopaleen. One particular target of O'Brien's scorn was J. M. Synge's Playboy of the Western World. O'Brien felt that with the success of Synge's play, the stage-Irishman as he appeared in Dion Boucicault's works of the mid-1800s had become the prime symbol of Irishness (although, it may be argued, both Boucicault and Synge are putting forward a subversive version of the stage Irishman who had been a staple part of English drama for centuries). The main thrust of O'Brien's knife is this: "The set-up is this. These people turn angrily on the British and roar: 'How dare you insult us with your stage Irishman, a monkey-faced leering scoundrel in ragged knee-breeches and a tail coat, always drunk and threatening anybody in sight with his shillelagh? We can put together a far better stage Irishman ourselves, thank you. The Irish Stage Irishman is the best in the world.'"
Letters II and III. Letters of James Joyce. Edited by Richard Ellman. New York: Viking, 1966.
James Joyce began his writing career in 1914 with a series of realistic stories published in a collection called The Dubliners. These short literary pieces are a glimpse into the ‘paralysis’ that those who lived in the turn of the century Ireland and its capital experienced at various points in life (Greenblatt, 2277). Two of the selections, “Araby” and “The Dead” are examples of Joyce’s ability to tell a story with precise details while remaining a detached third person narrator. “Araby” is centered on the main character experiencing an epiphany while “The Dead” is Joyce’s experiment with trying to remain objective. 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.