Modern Irish Literature - Richard Kearney (essay date 1988)

Richard Kearney (essay date 1988)

SOURCE: “A Crisis of Fiction: Flann O'Brien, Francis Stuart, John Banville,” in Transitions: Narratives in Modern Irish Culture, Manchester University Press, 1988, pp. 83-100.

[In the following essay, Kearney discusses works by Flann O'Brien, Francis Stuart, and John Banville.]

What was to become of the Irish novel after Joyce and Beckett? How would it be possible to go on writing fiction once its basic narrative quest-structure had been radically overhauled by Ulysses and the Trilogy? The fact of the matter is that the majority of Irish novelists continued, as did the majority of novelists elsewhere, in the classical tradition of fiction-writing in spite of the challenge issued by the radical modernism of Joyce and Beckett. In this mainstream tradition of Irish novelists figure such celebrated authors as Liam O'Flaherty, Sean O'Faolain, Kate O'Brien, Jennifer Johnston, Edna O'Brien,...

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