Copyright by Victoria Davis 2005 The Dissertation Committee for Victoria Ann Davis certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: Restating a Parochial Vision: A Reconsideration of Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, and Brendan Behan Committee: ______________________________ Charles Rossman, Supervisor ______________________________ Elizabeth Butler Cullingford ______________________________ Barbara Harlow ______________________________ Thomas F. Shea ______________________________ Dolora Chapelle Wojciehowski Restating a Parochial Vision: A Reconsideration of Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, and Brendan Behan by Victoria Ann Davis, B.A., M.A. Dissertation Presented to the Facul ty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin May 2005 Acknowledgements I am deeply grateful to all of the memb ers of my committee who guided and supported me through what has been a very long process. Charles Rossman read and reread all of the novels and plays addressed in my dissertation and spent many hours with me talking through these works. He has also read too many drafts to mention, and has seen the project change form drastically at least three times. All the while, he exhibited only interest and enthusiasm. Dolora Chappelle Wojciehowski taught me theory and has been present for all of the milestones of my academic career —Qualifying Exam, Three -Area Exam, Master’s Report, and now my dissertation and defense. Throughout the many years I have known her she has been a friendly and supportive mentor. Elizabeth Butler Cullingford and Barbara Harlow taught me academic rigor; in their seminars I not only broadened my understanding of Irish literature and history, but I also learned how to do clean, incisive, and innovative scholarship. Liz, with her close and careful reading of my work, also guided me towards a more efficient and effective prose style. Thomas Shea has not only been a guiding force in my understanding of Flann iv O’Brien, but he has also been a supportive mentor, going above and beyond in responding to my work and pointing me towards useful resources. In addition, I want to thank three friends: Lisa Moore, Jason Craft, and Ellen Crowell. Lisa gave me much needed pep talks and intellectual shoves when I needed them the most. Jason Craft read and commented on several chapters and helped me hone my argument . Ellen Crowell was involved at the front of the project, helping me develop the underpinnings of my final argument. Finally, I want to thank my husband, Eric Lupfer, without whom I might not have ever gotten this project into a presentable state. Not only did he gently coerce me into talking through points of my argument, especially when it was the last thing I wanted to do, but he also read and reread the antepenultimate, penultimate, and final drafts of all of the chapters, helping me to bring my argumen t forward and polish my prose. For the last few years, he has also fed me and taken care of a myriad of household tasks while I worked, and quelled my moments of uncertainty and exhaustion. I am extremely grateful to him for his kindness and support, and I love him dearly. v Restating a Parochial Vision: A Reconsideration of Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, and Brendan Behan Publication No. ______________ Victoria Ann Davis , Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2005 Supervisor: Charles Rossman The Irish Literary Revival and the Irish Literary Renaissance are familiar models in the criticism addressing early - to mid - twentieth century Irish literature. Post -Rebellion writers who do not fit neatly into these models are often overlooked by critics or considered predominantly in light of their failure either to live up to one particular model or adequately resist it. These nonaligned writers are also rarely seen as having any relation to one another, much less forming their own tradition. This projec t positions a certain kind of parochialism as an alternative model for considering a number of these post -Rebellion writers and thus offers a model for exhuming other writers of this generation from critical obscurity and misrepresentation. More importantl y, this model also vi illuminates the se writers’ innovative yet often overlooked engagement with cultural forces, such as tradition, myth, history, and landscape. It also links critically three writers who are often only linked anecdotally: Patrick Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, and Brendan Behan. Early chapters focus on the development of Kavanagh’s parochial vision, beginning with an examination of parochialism in the context of the revival, and then an exploration of Kavanagh’s own different and emerging sense of parochialism in two early works, “Shancoduff ” (1937), and “Inniskeen Road: July Evening” (1936). Kavanagh’s best -known works, The Green Fool (1938), The Great Hunger (1942), and Tarry Flynn (1948) are examined in light of their contribution to the achieve ment of Kavanagh’s ultimate parochial vision. In its consideration of Flann O’Brien ’s At Swim -Two -Birds (1939) and An Béal Bocht (1941) /The Poor Mouth (1973), the project shows how O’Brien re -create s and re -maps familiar Irish landscapes in order to establish spaces in which factors influencing the formation of national identity are negotiated. Additionally, the project explores how O’Brien ’s re -mapping of two less familiar landscapes in The Third Policeman (1941/1967) and The Dalkey Archive (1964) reveals the synthesis of metaphysical and scientific ideas into parochial understanding. The vii project concludes with an examination of Behan’s articulation of an “urban” parochial vision in which certain neglected Dublin populations negotiate a changing Ireland wi thin claustrophobic tenements and prison cells. viii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Remapping the Parish: Patrick Kavanagh 24 and the Development of a Parochial Vision Chapter 2: Patrick Kavanagh and the Perils of the 72 Peasant Poet Cha pter 3: “A View From the Trees:” Remapping the 141 Literary Landscapes of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim Two Birds and The Poor Mouth Chapter 4: Rural Hells and Suburban Heavens: The 201 Metaphysics of Identity in O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and The Dalkey Archiv e Conclusion : Brendan Behan and the Next Generation 247 of Parochial Writers Selected Bibliography 281 Vita 289 ix Introduction As legend has it, the statue of Our Lady of Dublin at St. Mary’s Abbey was saved from destruction during the Refor mation by being taken to a nearby inn -yard to be used as a pig trough. What is not clear from the legend, however, is whether Our Lady was saved out of a desire to preserve her and the tradition she represented, or purely for her newfound practical utility . During this period, religious statues were often hollowed out at the back to reduce their weight and to prevent the wood from warping and splitting. Hence, some of these statues were eventually used, and thereby altered, in ways that their makers could never have anticipated. Certainly Our Lady of Dublin, which now resides at Whitefriars Street Church, is a profoundly different statue from the one that escaped destruction centuries earlier. Not only did the statue serve time as a trough, at some point it was also thoroughly whitewashed. In 1824, after a father from Whitefriars Street Church recognized and purchased her in a second -hand shop, she was stripped of the whitewash, the process destroying her original polychrome finish. 1 In After Kavanagh: Patric k Kavanagh and the Discourse of Irish Poetry , poet and critic Michael O’Loughlin uses the story of Our Lady of Dublin as a model for understanding the problems that resulted from the translation of Irish literature into the English language during the 19th century. 1 In most cases, the only literature that survived was the literature that could be “translated” in some fashion. O’Loughlin mentions in particular the case of Thomas Moore, the author of the popular Irish Melodies (1807-1835), whose works endured into the twentieth century as the only connection many Irish people had to this past. As O’ Loughlin states, Moore did not endure because he was a great poet; “it is enough that he merely existed.”2 Because he present ed an overly Romantic version of Ireland, primarily to an English audience, he was disparaged by a diverse group, including Patrick Kavanagh, James Joyce, and the Irish Irelanders. Like a statue that could be hollowed out and used in a barnyard, the works of a nineteenth century writer such as Thomas Moore came to signify very different things to different audiences in twentieth century Ireland. 1 Michael O’Loughlin, After Kavanagh: Patrick Kavanagh and the Discourse of Irish Poetry (Dublin: Raven Arts Press, 1985), 14. 2 O’Loughlin, After Kavanagh: Patrick Kavanagh and the Discourse of Irish Poetry , 12. 2 With a slight change of emphasis, the story of Our Lady of Dublin can also serve as a model for understanding th e problems faced by writers in post -Rebellion Ireland such as Kavanagh, Flann O’Brien, Kate O’Brien, Brendan Behan, and the writers associated with The Bell such as Sean O’Faolain and Peadar O’Donnell . These writers were charged with a task similar to that of the individuals who rebuilt the Irish churches and hunted down religious objects in the wake of the Reformation and the Persecution. Inheriting the cultural rubble left by both the Rebellion and the colonial past, these writers were “obliged to deal in broken mirrors, some of whose fragments [had] been irretrievably lost.”3 And unlike the clergy who had little choice but to attempt to restore the churches and religious objects they salvaged, these Irish writers were faced with multiple, conflicting opti ons.