L’“immram” nell’Irlanda del XX secolo Una lettura comparativa dei romanzi di Flann O’Brien

Abstract

This paper seeks to offer a unitary vision of Flann O’Brien’s novels through a comparative reading with the immram, a genre from the Irish literary tradition with which O’Brien’s work bears numerous meaningful affinities and analogies. Particular attention is devoted to the Immram curaig Máele Dúin, whose fundamental characteristics we find, in variable measure and manner, in O’Brien’s novels. The intolerance of linearity of plot, the digressive spirit and progression of the narration, the taste for literary artifice and meta-literary play, the centrality of the theme of guilt and above all the complete fluidity of time-space confines which are violated and continually re-defined are essential elements of O’Brien’s narrative which can be recognized, albeit in nuce, in the immram.