Flann O'Brien

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This study is the first comprehensive examination of performance, masking, and illusion in the author's fiction, columns, correspondence, and scripts. The essays reveal O'Brien's literary engagement with various theatrical movements, including melodrama, revivalism, and modernist anti-theatre, as well as notable playwrights like Shakespeare, Yeats, and Beckett. Often seen as a solitary figure in the Irish novel landscape, O'Brien is repositioned alongside mid-century playwrights and performers, engaging with local audiences at venues such as The Irish Times and the Abbey Theatre. A new perspective of O'Brien emerges as a collaborative writer embedded in the cultural fabric of his era. The study highlights his overlooked works for stage and screen, reevaluating scripts like Thirst and Rhapsody in Stephen's Green within their historical contexts and themes of war, nationalism, and identity. Innovative readings of masking and mimicry in his fiction and columns provide fresh insights into his use of pseudonyms, theories of literary performance, and the interplay of comic and tragic tones, revealing his dynamic role in Irish modernism.