An Béal Bocht

In his novels (but also in his satirical columns) Flann O’Brien proves to be one of the most attentive and irreverent observers of the cultural and political-ideological phenomena occurring in Ireland, chiefly with regard to the re-discovery, enhancement and exploitation of the ancient Celtic literature and of the living Gaelic folklore. Flann O’Brien espouses an extremely personal approach to the heritage of traditional myths, legends, heroes, beliefs, an approach that bears innovative as well as hilarious, mocking, and even subversive results. Thus, his works reflect, on the one hand, the factual nature of folklore as a ceaseless process re-shaping and re-creating a given tradition, yet, on the other hand, undermine and de-construct a certain idea of Irish folklore claimed by most of his contemporaries, committed in the (re)construction of a Nation. Indeed, many Irish scholars, intellectuals, politicians, in order to legitimize and consecrate a pure and peculiar Irish identity, tend to conceive a stereotyped and self-celebratory notion of Gaelic tradition, definitely regarded as an illustrious heritage supplying a wealth of edifying items, stripped of their historical-cultural context. Through An Béal Bocht, his Gaelic novel, Flann O’Brien, or better, Myles na gCopaleen, provides a grotesque, surreal, sarcastic parody of a largely fictitious and neo-colonialist view of the Irish folklore – in particular of the Gaelic language. In chapter 4 – the specific subject of analysis – a Gaelic feis is arranged in an imaginary Gaeltacht’s village only to meet the expectations of the “Gaeligores” coming from Dublin. Here the biases and misunderstandings of the enlightened elites, along with the sluggish (often complaisant) submission of the bearers of the authentic Gaelic identity, disclose, obviously in an exaggerated and farcical way, the dynamics concerning the encounter/clash between tradition and modernity, centre and periphery, Anglophone and Irish culture, eventually between past and present of folklore, or else between two or more different ways to conceive and use it.