Understanding and Mis-understanding in Language in Brian O’Nolan’s An Béal Bocht and Cruiskeen Lawn

Abstract

Brian O’Nolan, part of the so-called Irish Modernism that arose at the same time as the declaration of the Republic, finds his literary form traversed by the question of Irish identity and materializes it in the “awesome jaggedness and seeming formlessness” (Kiberd 266-267) of his prose. Language, particularly in An Béal Bocht and Cruiskeen Lawn, explores its status and understanding, both in an imaginary Gaeltacht and in scenes from everyday life, respectively. This article seeks to read three different types of language apprehension in Brian O’Nolan’s work: “faint-understanding”, “misunderstanding” and “over-understanding”. These three forms of understanding are how the author questions the pure and strict learning of language, revealing the complexity of acquiring communicational expertise and highlighting the linguistic threshold where English and Irish coexist and struggle.