Brian O’Nolan’s comic and critical reconception of narratives of the embellished Past in independent Ireland, 1938-1966

This dissertation investigates the work of Irish novelist and journalist Flann O’Brien/Myles na Gopaleen (pseudonym of Brian O’Nolan, 1911-1966). Recurrent themes in his popular Irish Times column, “Cruiskeen Lawn,” and his novels are discussed in relation to relevant historical developments of the period in which he wrote (1938-1966), and analysed in relation to a literary aesthetic of haunting and Irish cultural memory. This approach provides new insight into the cultural conflicts, woes, triumphs and conundrums of his day and shows O’Nolan in a new, more serious light, thereby making an important contribution to both Irish Studies and O’Nolan criticism. The main focus is on O’Nolan’s comic critique of a conflict in independent Ireland between tradition and the past on the one hand and modernity and the present on the other hand. His literary project draws attention to the often contradictory ways that narratives about the Irish past were deployed after 1922 to shape the modern Irish future and define the young state’s relationship to its complex colonial and pre-colonial past. O’Nolan exposes inconsistencies, contradictions, parallels and hypocrisies in the different uses of past-narratives, some of which were simultaneously invoked by different parties for quite different ends. Four novels and several “Cruiskeen Lawn” columns are analysed in relation to Irish cultural debate, with an emphasis on the 1940s. Subjects discussed include the Irish language question and the rural Gaelic past as touchstones of Irish identity; the role of science in modern Irish education and industry; the changing and changed position of the individual in society; Catholicism; philosophy; and Ireland’s relation to the wider world. The critical concepts in this analysis include haunting, spectrality, cultural memory and Bakhtinian dialogism. O’Nolan actively invokes voices or emblems of the dead and forgotten or suppressed narratives – thereby participating in an Irish tradition of seeking renewed dialogue with the dead and history in order to influence the present and do justice to the past. Haunting and the transformative power of spectres in his fiction is related to the construction of Irish cultural memory. His work is populated by spectral characters and flamboyantly mixes temporal categories, enabling O’Nolan to bring disparate periods and figures of memory into proximity with each other, so that multiple pasts and ways of relating these to a present that has (or could have) at least as many interpretations can be acknowledged and encouraged. It is argued that O’Nolan is a reactive, dialogic, post-modernist agitator who insists on the importance of constant dialogue to achieve a deeper understanding of current events and life itself. His journalistic persona, Myles na Gopaleen, functions as a sounding board for his society between 1940 and 1966. By advocating dialogic perspectives and engaging in dialogue with his readers – literally and figuratively – about everything from Church history to bus timetables – O’Nolan demonstrates that monologic narratives can never encompass the totality of existence, in Ireland or elsewhere. Without necessarily advocating dialogue and dialogism to achieve consensus, his work ultimately relies on and demands conflictual dialogue and multiple perspectives in order to do justice to disparate Irish histories and identitie