“I took the left turn for eternity”: otherworlds, afterlives, and discursive storytelling traditions in Flann O’Brien’s The Third Policeman and Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s Graveyard Clay

2025/07/03 by Mikelyn Rochford · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Irish and British Studies #Joseph Conrad and Literature #Scottish History and National Identity

paper · doi:10.1080/09670882.2025.2533548

openalex publication_date 2025/07/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/14

Abstract

This essay explores Flann O’Brien’s posthumously published The Third Policeman (1967) and Máirtín Ó Cadhain’s 1949 Irish language novel Cré na Cille (Graveyard Clay) through their use of literary otherworlds as derived from earlier Irish storytelling traditions, and challenges the ways in which narrative theory has conceived of afterlife stories as “unnatural,” oppositional, or dependent on a privileged realist norm. Instead, I will examine these novels through a contextualist and historiographic lens to explore how the afterlife experiences of these novels serve as imaginative horizons inviting a shift in readerly expectation, thereby repurposing these modes derived from literary tradition to grapple with modern problems and themes.

Discussions

• The 2025 BAIS Essay Prize winner, written by Mikelyn Rochford @mikelyn.bsky.social is now available to read on Irish Studies Review! doi.org/10.1080/0967... [bsky, 7 points, 0 comments]

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