Programme update

There is a slight change to the running order on Sunday morning. Val O’Donnell will perform material from Cruiskeen Lawn at 10am, with ‘A Rough Guide to Flann O’Brien’ now running at 10.45.

Venue: update

Please note that the Flann O’Brien weekend will open on Friday evening in the Long Room Hub, Trinity College.

On Saturday and Sunday, all events will take place in the Emmet Theatre in the Arts Building (adjacent to the Hub).

Advance Booking

Advance booking for Flann 100 is now open.

All events are free, but please register only for those you wish to attend.

To register and print your ticket for each session (morning, afternoon or evening) visit our eventbrite page:

http://flann100.eventbrite.com/

Flann O’Brien Centenary Weekend, Trinity College Dublin

Friday 14^th October     Venue: Long Room Hub

5.30-6.00  Registration for conference delegates

6.15            Official Opening: Micheál  O Nualláin

6.30          Opening Lecture:

                  Fintan O’Toole (The Irish Times), ‘Oblomov in Ireland’

7.30-         Wine Reception

 

Saturday 15^th October – Academic Programme    Venue: Emmet Theatre, Arts Building

9.30-11.00            Language Games and Adaptation

Chair: Dr Eibhlín Evans

Adrian Naughton (UCD) “[Y]ewy yew-yews” and “[t]he stupid unwitting woodcock”: Parody and the Sweeney verses in At Swim-Two-Birds

Flore Coulouma (Paris) – ‘Bad jokes, I love them: Flann O’Brien’s dead serious philosophy of language’

Werner Huber (Vienna) – A Tale from the Vienna Woods: Adapting At Swim-Two-Birds for the Big Screen

 

11.00-11.30       Coffee Break

11.30 – 1.00      Arresting Developments: Reading The Third Policeman

Chair: Dr Paul Delaney (TCD)

Alana Gillespie (Utrecht) – From Lower Down or Higher Up: Spectral, Sceptical Dialogism in The Third Policeman

Paul Fagan (Vienna) – “the happy conviction that one is not, of all nincompoops, the

greatest”: Meaning, Relevance, and  Effects of the Comic and Sublime in Flann O’Brien

Jennika Baines (UCD) – No reason for faith: Manichaeism and Catholicism in The Third Policeman

1.00 – 2.00       Lunch Break

2.00 – 3.00       Keynote Lecture     Chair: Dr Sam Slote (TCD)

Keith Hopper (Oxford), ‘Writing to the Future: Flann O’Brien in the 21st Century’

3.00-3.30         Coffee Break

3.30 – 5.00        O’Brien, Joyce and Literary Doubles

Chair: Dr Jennika Baines (UCD)

Thierry Robin (Brest) – ‘Two in One’ or the primal crime scene in O’Brien’s world

Ondrej Pilny (Prague) – Flann O’Brien and Pataphysics

John Wyse Jackson – Brian O’Nolan and Envoy

5.15 – 6.15         Closing Roundtable     Chair: Dr Carol Taaffe

Anthony Cronin, Dr Louis de Paor (NUIG), Dr Joseph Brooker (Birkbeck)

   Sunday 16^th October – Cultural Programme     

 Supported by The Irish Times and UNESCO City of Literature

   Venue: Emmet Theatre, Arts Building

     

10.00-10.30   Selections from Cruiskeen Lawn

Performance by Val O’Donnell

10.45-11.45   Messrs Flann, Finn & Co: A Rough Guide to Flann O’Brien

Lecture/ Performance by Dr Eibhlín Evans and Jack Lynch

12.00-1.00  The Writers’ Writer – Panel Discussion

Chair: Dr Carol Taaffe

Frank McNally, The Irish Times

Ed O’Loughlin, author of Toploader (2011) and Not Untrue and Not Unkind (2009)

Arthur Riordan, author of Slattery’s Sago Saga (2010) and Improbable Frequency (2004)

2.00-3.00   The Science of Flann O’Brien

Lecture/ Performance by Prof. Dermot Diamond and Fergus Cronin

3.15-4.15     Staging Flann O’Brien – Panel Discussion

Chair: Dr Eugene McNulty (St. Patrick’s College)

Eamon Morrissey, creator of The Brother

Jocelyn Clarke, adaptor of At Swim-Two-Birds (2009) and The Third Policeman (2007)

Kellie Hughes, actor with Blue Raincoat Theatre Co.

4.30-5.00    At Swim-Two-Birds

Rehearsed reading of excerpts from O’Brien’s classic novel

Flann O’Brien Centenary Conference, TCD

Trinity College Dublin, 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. More details to follow.

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