cfp.english.upenn.edu

Flann O’Brien Centenary Conference
Trinity College Dubin, 14-15 October 2011

October 2011 is the centenary of the birth of Brian O’Nolan, as well as that of Flann O’Brien, Myles na gCopaleen, Brother Barnabas, George Knowall, John James Doe and all their literary associates. To mark the occasion, Trinity College Dublin will host a conference examining O’Nolan’s work and legacy in the twenty-first century.

Writing as Flann O’Brien, he became one of the most critically acclaimed novelists of the modern (or post-modern) period. As the Irish Times columnist Myles na gCopaleen, he also achieved a popular success unique among his generation of Irish writers. The conference organisers invite consideration of Brian O’Nolan in all his literary guises: as an experimental novelist and a surreal humorist, as an Irish modernist and a self-styled populist, as a cultural critic, a bilingual author, and a classic exemplar of the writer’s writer.

The conference organisers particularly welcome discussion of O’Nolan’s position in Irish culture as well as his significant international legacy, his work in the Irish language, his movement between the experimental modernist novel and a mass newspaper readership, and his influence on contemporary writers.

Suggested topics include:
• O’Brien, modernism and popular culture
• The Irish comic tradition
• Authorship and originality
• The Irish language and the Gaelic Revival
• Flann/ Myles as a cultural critic
• Adaptations and translations
• Post-modernism and metafiction
• Flann O’Brien and the ‘new physics’

Confirmed Speakers: Fintan O’Toole (The Irish Times), Dr Keith Hopper (Oxford), Dr Louis de Paor (NUIG), Dr Joseph Brooker (Birkbeck)

The conference will be followed by a programme of public talks and performances on Sunday 16th October. For updates see www.flann100.wordpress.com or visit the Flann O’Brien Centenary Conference on facebook.

Please submit proposals of 250 words to conference organisers Carol Taaffe, Eibhlín Evans and Paul Delaney at flann100@gmail.com by 16th May 2011.