Cycnos | Numéros | Volume 15.2 - Irlande - Exils

Résumé :

As opposed to a good number of his fellow countrymen, Flann O’Brien (1911–1966) did not choose to flee his home country Ireland into exile. Yet his first two novels, At Swim-Two-Birds (1939) et The Third Policeman (1940–1967) reveal a particular form of exile into the imaginary world of fiction. How can mirrors help to read exile as a metaphor of metafictional writing? The world of exile depicted in The Third Policeman is peopled with bicycles. Real human hybrids, they are the epitome of linguistic transgression. Pedalling and producing a fictional text being therefore equivalent, how do bicycles metaphorically represent the unifying voice that the narrators yearn for? While bicycles poetically manage to fill the ontological void that sends the narrators into metaphorical exile, Flann O’Brien writes a mythology of modern times against the background of Celtic legends.

Date de publication : 2008-07-09