Centre for Irish Studies, Charles University, Prague
16-19 September 2015
Written at a time of profound transformation in post-independence Ireland and war-torn Europe, and displaying an acute awareness of the epochal changes bearing on modern notions of literature and the self, Flann O’Brien’s œuvre offers a sustained engagement with the representation of cultural, political, and personal metamorphosis. This is a body of writing in which the human always bears the potential to be radically remade in the forms of horses, bicycles, and trains; in which genre, language, and literary form are constantly reorganized and refashioned; in which a programme of pseudonymity presents the comic writer as a master of disguise and identity as a matter of constant flux. At Metamorphoses: The III International Flann O’Brien Conference, the organizers propose to build on the current sea change in O’Brien studies to foster a scholarly and critical debate dedicated to the theme of metamorphosis in the writer’s work.
Joseph Brooker (Birkbeck, University of London)
Catherine Flynn (University of California, Berkeley)
Brian Ó Conchubhair (University of Notre Dame)
Kevin Barry (City of Bohane; winner of the 2013 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award)
Gerry Smyth & Co. (Liverpool John Moores University)
Ondřej Pilný (Charles University, Prague), Paul Fagan (Salzburg University), Ruben Borg (Hebrew University of Jerusalem)
Faculty of Arts, Charles University, Palachovo nám. 2, 116 38 Prague 1 (at the metro A Staroměstská station), Room 111 (1st floor) and Room 200 (2nd floor)
Galina Kiryushina (registration coordinator), galina.kiryushina(at)ff.cuni.cz
To join the International Flann O’Brien Society and receive updates on society conferences and your free copy of the society’s peer-reviewed journal The Parish Review, send your details to viennacis.anglistik(at)univie.ac.at.
The organisers gratefully acknowledge the support of:
Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Ireland
The Embassy of Ireland to the Czech Republic
The Programme for the Development of Research Areas at Charles University P09, ‘Literature and Art in Intercultural Relations’, sub-programme ‘Transformations of the Cultural History of the Anglophone Countries: Identities, Periods, Canons’
Centre for Irish Studies, University of Vienna
Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures, Charles University
Faculty of Arts, Charles University
Liverpool John Moores University