Metamorphoses: The Third International Flann O’Brien Conference

Charles University, Prague, 16-19 September 2015

Prague

Metamorphoses: The III International Flann O’Brien Conference
Charles University, Prague, 16-19 September 2015

Keynote Speakers
Joseph Brooker (Birkbeck, University of London)
Catherine Flynn (University of California, Berkeley)
Brian Ó Conchubhair (University of Notre Dame)

Guest Writer
Kevin Barry (City of Bohane; winner of the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award)

Written at a time of profound transformation in post-independence Ireland and war-torn Europe, and displaying an acute awareness of the epochal changes bearing on modern notions of literature and the self, Flann O’Brien’s oeuvre offers a sustained engagement with the representation of cultural, political, and personal metamorphosis. This is a body of writing in which the human always bears the potential to be radically remade in the forms of horses, bicycles, and trains; in which genre, language, and literary form are constantly reorganised and refashioned; in which a programme of pseudonymity presents the comic writer as a master of disguise and identity as a matter of constant flux.

At Metamorphoses: The III International Flann O’Brien Conference (Charles University, Prague, 16-19 September 2015), the organisers propose to build on the current sea change in O’Brien studies to foster a scholarly and critical debate dedicated to these themes of metamorphosis in the writer’s work. At stake will be the ways in which O’Brien’s English and Irish language novels, short stories, column-writing, non-fiction, teleplays, and theatrical work:

• Test the limits and possibilities of identity, hybridity, & concepts of post-humanity;
• Engage and transform cultural, political, & economic upheaval at home and abroad;
• Process radical paradigm shifts in the sciences, from Darwinian evolution theory to the “Mollycule Theory” of quantum physics;
• Explore (anti-)modernist reconstructions of myth, whether Irish or Ovidian;
• Attend to linguistic, generic, and formal mutations, as well as the resonances between metamorphosis, metaphor, and metafiction;
• Present shifting views of himself, his own writing, and the figure of the Author;
• Are transformed in the acts of reception, rewriting, translation, & adaptation;
• Are opened up for new readings by genetic analyses of the vast and critically under-analysed collections of his works in progress (correspondence, manuscripts, drafts) housed at Boston College, Southern Illinois University, & University of Texas at Austin;
• Are amenable to new comparative readings with Prague’s sons Franz Kafka and Karel Čapek, as well as other modernist writers and movements of transformation, from Jarry & Joyce, Borges & Beckett, to the Absurdists, Futurists, & Surrealists.

Abstracts: If you would like to propose a paper (not exceeding 20 minutes), or panel (maximum 3 speakers) please submit your title and an abstract of 250 words accompanied by a short biographical sketch to viennacis.anglistik@univie.ac.at by 1 March 2015.

Find Flann O'Brien on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Reading Brian O'Nolan's Libraries
• Flann O'Brien & Modernism
• http://www.apieceofmonologue.com/2011/08/flann-obrien-beckett-joyce-irish.html
• Re Joyce
• Reading Finnegans Wake

Flann O'Brien & Modernism

A collection of essays edited by Julian Murphet, Rónán McDonald, and Sascha Morrell

Flann O'Brien & Modernism

A new title from Bloomsbury:

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. [Read More]

Find on Amazon: US | UK

Also at A Piece of Monologue:

• Reading Brian O'Nolan's Libraries
• Flann O'Brien Centenary Appraisal
• Re Joyce
• Reading Finnegans Wake
• Beckett, Joyce and Irish Exile

Reading Brian O'Nolan's Libraries

The International Flann O'Brien Society issues a call for papers

Flann O'Brien at the Palace Bar in Dublin. Photograph: Getty Images.

Call For Papers: ‘Reading Brian O’Nolan’s Libraries’

The Parish Review
Official Journal of the International Flann O’Brien Society

The expanding field of Brian O’Nolan (Flann O’Brien/Myles na gCopaleen) scholarship has undergone a remarkable transformation in the wake of the writer’s 2011 centenary. This renewed scholarly interest has given rise to a range of Cultural Materialist, Deconstructionist, and Genetic approaches, amongst others, that have explored the representation, and indeed the limits of, knowledge within O’Nolan’s oeuvre. His writing continues to resonate within the public sphere, as is attested by the many reissues, adaptations, and collections of his works, including the recent publication of his dramatic works and short stories by Dalkey Archive Press. As Flann O’Brien (At Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman) and Myles na gCopaleen (Cruiskeen Lawn, An Béal Bocht), O’Nolan is celebrated, in part, for his savage parodies of academic institutions, erudite individuals, and pedagogical methods; a reputation that appears to rest uneasily alongside this increasing scholarly attention.

The John Burns Library at Boston College acquired Brian O’Nolan’s papers and personal library in February 1997, yet a complete inventory of the latter has only just been compiled and published for the first time in the most recent issue of The Parish Review (2.1, Fall 2013), guest edited by Maebh Long. (A copy of the issue, including the full inventory, is available from the International Flann O’Brien Society by contacting the general editors at viennacis.anglistik@univie.ac.at). This is an important and exciting resource for O’Nolan scholars: the library contains over four hundred books, periodicals, and newspapers in French, German, Greek, Irish, and Latin on subjects as diverse as archaeology, philosophy, politics, psychology, science, and theology. Additionally, there are literary texts from the Classical, Renaissance, Romantic, Victorian, and Modern periods. Due to the complexity of this collection, its potential as a resource for scholarship is only beginning to be examined.

A forthcoming issue of The Parish Review (October 2014) will take up the question of how to assess Brian O’Nolan’s personal library, particularly in light of the representation of archives, marginalia, and scholarship across his oeuvre. We will encourage dialogue between frequently polarized critical approaches, asking which O’Nolan we might find between these shelves. Is O’Nolan’s work invigorated or exhausted by questions of influence? Does the representation of scholarship within his work mark a point of potential or resistance for archival approaches? What might be gathered from the annotations and marginalia within this wide-ranging collection of texts? Or should O’Nolan scholarship be spared from such lines of inquisition? The editors invite proposals on any aspect of O’Nolan’s writing, but are especially interested in papers that explore the holdings at the Burns Library and/or investigate the wider epistemological issues that arise within his work.

Potential topics for papers include, but are by no means limited to:

• How models of influence are sustained by and/or undermined by O’Nolan’s work
• The complexities of O’Nolan’s national and intellectual contexts
• The representation of libraries and/or scholarship within modernist and post-modernist texts
• O’Nolan’s engagement with, or response to, specific literary movements
• How emerging methodologies and technologies might inform our use and understanding of O’Nolan’s library

Essay proposals of no more than 300 words should be submitted to theparishreview@gmail.com by 31 January 2014.

Essays will be limited to 5,000 words and adhere to the MLA style guide. They will be submitted for peer-review to the editors by 31 May 2014. Contributors can expect to receive feedback by 31 July 2014. [Read More]

Find Flann O'Brien on Amazon: US | UK

Flann O'Brien Centenary Appraisal

Does O'Brien belong alongside Joyce and Beckett?

Keith Hopper of the New Statesman reviews Flann O'Brien's debut, At Swim-Two-Birds, and suggests that a critical reevaluation of the writer is long overdue: 'For a growing number of readers, Flann O'Brien is the third in the trinity of modern Irish novelists: alongside James Joyce the Father and Samuel Beckett the Son, he is the Holy Ghost in the machine. When he began writing, the term "postmodernism" had yet to be coined, but O'Brien was a postmodernist at a time when it was - as he put it - "neither profitable nor popular".' [Read More]