Flann O'Brien: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist -- Book Review

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Flann O'Brien

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist

2nd Edition

by Keith Hopper

Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman, completed in 1940, was initially rejected by his publishers for being "too fantastic", and only appeared posthumously in 1967. Since then O’Brien has achieved cult status, although critical appraisal of his work has focused almost exclusively on his first novel, At Swim Two Birds (1939). By 1940 O’Brien was confronted with two towering traditions: the jaded legacy of Yeats’s Celtic Twilight and the problematic complexities of Joyce’s modernism. With The Third Policeman, O’Brien forges a powerful synthesis between these two traditions, and the paraliterary path he chooses marks the historical transition from modernism to post-modernism.



This groundbreaking study, first published in 1995 and now substantially revised, reconfigures O’Brien as a highly subversive writer within a rich and fertile literary landscape: indisputably Irish yet distinctly post-modern. It identifies The Third Policeman as a subversive intellectual satire, in the cutting-edge tradition of Swift and Sterne, and situates it as one of the earliest – and most exciting – examples of post-modernist fiction.

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This book review appeared in Stylus: Trade, Academic, and Professional Books - Fall 2014, book catalogue. For more information about, and to place an order of "Flann O'Brien, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Post-Modernist," please check Stylus/Cork University Press website.

Eco-Joyce -- Book Review

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Eco-Joyce

The Environmental Imagination of James Joyce

Edited by Robert Joseph Brazeau ,  Derek Gladwin

Scholars working within Irish studies draw on a wide variety of critical outlooks, including cultural studies, post-colonial studies, transnational studies, gender studies and, of course, modernist studies; this book will help that community become better acquainted with how ecocriticism elucidates the work of Irish writers, and will encourage further research in this direction. Even writers like Joyce, who are usually regarded as primarily urban, exhibit a strong ecological dimension in their work, and there are many other Irish writers who have produced work that directly engages issues in ecology and environmental studies. Eco-Joyce covers a multitude of disciplines in an attempt to serve as a point of entry into Joyce and ecocriticism, of course, but it will also suggest ways in which Irish studies and modernist studies could gain energy from this relatively new and vital approach.

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This book review appeared in Stylus: Trade, Academic, and Professional Books - Fall 2014, book catalogue. For more information about, and to place an order of "Eco-Joyce," please check Stylus/Cork University Press website.

Christmas Ceili

Christmas Céilí

When: Saturday, 20 December at 8PM - 11:30 PM

Where: Blessed Sacrament Church Hall. 194 Fourth Ave. with Percy St. (in the Glebe). Ottawa, K1S 2L6

$15 non members, $10 members, $5 registered students, 12 and under free.

The December céili is also the time for Comhaltas Ottawa's annual TOQUES & TOES DRIVE. Please bring donations of new warm winter clothing such as mittens, socks, scarves, coats, toques, etc for those less fortunate in our community

Music is provided live by the Ottawa Ceili Band, Gold medal winners in the last two years at the Oireachtas in Tamworth, Ontario. A whole night of ceili and set dancing, entertainment, with free snacks at 10pm.

Main entertainment of the night will be the Ottawa Celtic Choir, under the direction of E. MacIsaac. Also, Eithne Dunbar will launch her CD before the first intermission.

No experience necessary for dancing (people will help you). A lot of fun and at a great price!

We hope to see you all there!!   

Come and join us for a good ceol, caint, filíocht, damhsa & craic! 

Notes from the CCÉ Ottawa Chair, November – December 2014

In November there was a Lá Gaeilge Irish Language weekend organized by Caint is Comhrá, under the auspices of the Ottawa Branch of Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann, with many people attending the language sessions.

Also, I have arranged to have a classroom available at Ottawa University on Wednesday evenings, for CCÉ Irish language learners, starting in January 2015 (details will soon be available on the CCÉ website). 

Tomás Ó Murchú, will be teaching the TEG preparation course for the students preparing to write the B2 level Irish proficiency test in April 2015. Some of the students that have indicated interest in these sessions are Bridget Guglich, Joan O’Donohue, Margaret Moriarty, and Patricia Willoughby. Hopefully, many others would decide to attend these classes.

In October I attended the Ottawa Gaels AGM. The current Chair of the Ottawa Gaels, Vanessa McLean, and myself have agreed to work closely together for the promotion of our respective activities. On another note, the Gaels have done a terrific job in doing two things: fund raising and getting very young children involved in the Gaelic football. To raise funds, they have run golf tournaments and a Pig Roast, and they are running Gaelic football workshops as an after school program in certain schools.

Bought and sent a flower arrangement to Mary O’Donnell on behalf of CCÉ in honour of the years of service that her husband, Ruadhraí, gave to the branch. 

Respectfully submitted, Cathaoirleach