Title: | Hibernian Choices: The politics of naming in Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds |
Author: | Adrian Oțoiu |
Publication: | Numele și numirea. Actele Conferinței Internaționale de Onomastică. Ediția I: Interferențe multietnice în antroponimie, p. 357 |
ISBN: | 978-606-543-176-8 |
Editors: | Oliviu Felecan |
Publisher: | Editura Mega |
Place: | Cluj-Napoca |
Year: | 2011 |
Abstract: | [Alegeri hiberniene: politica numirii în „La Doi Lebădoi” de Flann O’Brien] Names – whether his own numerous pseudonyms or the names he gave his characters – were important for Irish modernist writer Flann O’Brien. Whereas his own noms de plume often act as heteronyms denoting the various elusive personae that he multiplied himself into, the onomastics of his characters can be seen as responding to the contemporary language politics of the new Irish state. We will describe O’Brien as having been involved in all the strategies of the Free Irish State towards the (often artificial) growth of the Irish language: education, administration, standardisation. An afficionado of the Irish language but also a critic of the conservative traditionalism of the Celtic revivalists, O’Brien’s responses to ‘Irishness’ are often ambiguous. While a vast majority of the names of his characters in At Swim-Two-Birds are of Irish origin, those names often underwent a process of anglicisation. In the case of the novel’s title, we will identify a process of double erasure, echoing the historical erasures of Irish identity. However, a particular scene featuring “the hero of old Ireland,” Finn MacCool, will be read – against several critical opinions – as resisting such erasures by displaying both names (in a simultaneity reminiscent of that of film subtitling) in a contrasting way that valorises positively indigenous toponymics and anthroponyms and thus celebrates the legacy of the Celtic past. |
Key words: | Irish modernism, Irish language politics, anglicisation, disconnectedness of cultures, erasure, fictional names, heteronyms |
Language: | English |
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