Big and Learned and Far From Simple: Intellectual Narration in "The Plain People of Ireland" and The Third Policeman

Maggie Glass

doi:10.16995/pr.3367

Maggie Glass

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Brian Ó Nualláin is a man of many names and many voices. The narrative power he posseses is exemplified when comparing 'The Plain People of Ireland' segments of the Cruiskeen Lawn columns in The Irish Times, penned under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen, and the voice of the nameless narrator in Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman. Within these two works, the position of the intellectual in Irish society is portrayed through quite different lenses: the self-confident, perpetually correct Myles, and the timid, obsessively rational narrator. While both voices are erudite and authoritative, their positioning within the environments they inhabit could not be more different. This article examines the positioning of the 'intellectual narrator' in Ireland, as portrayed by the various voices of Ó Nualláin, focusing specifically on the tone utilised throughout the respective pieces to differentiate the social standing of the narrators from those they encounter. The mastery of language apparent in both 'The Plain People of Ireland' and The Third Policeman&nbsp;subverts the expected portrayal of a public intellectual, destabalising the inherent class politics that imbue both works without dismantling them all together.

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Brian Ó Nualláin[1] was an educated man, completing his Masters’s degree in Irish at University College Dublin.[2]
This article examines the positioning of the ‘intellectual narrator’ in Ireland, as portrayed by the various voices of Ó Nualláin, focusing on the tone utilised throughout the respective pieces to differentiate the social standing of the narrators from those they encounter
Osborn Bergin, and Richard Best,[3] his brother Ciarán noted, ‘Is léir nach raibh ar a aire ach a chéim a ghnóthú ar son cibé tairbhe a bheadh inti’ [It is clear that he did not have anything on his mind except for finishing his degree for whatever benefit it might offer].4. He joined the Civil Services in 1935 and never returned to academia. Regardless, he valued his own depth of knowledge and was confident enough in his position as an intellectual to assert the right to pontificate on matters of public concern – despite the prohibitions on publicly stating political opinions that came with his position as a civil servant – and was ‘able to claim expertise as [a] promulgator of general cultural values,’ and ‘to act as [an] arbiter of public morality.’[5]. This intellectual confidence informed the wide breadth of work he published under his various pseudonyms, which is characterised by its diversity of genre and style, its masterful manipulation of multiple languages, and the distinctive personalities it portrays

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Brian Ó Nualláin[1] was an educated man, completing his Masters’s degree in Irish at University College Dublin.[2]. Maggie Glass, ‘Big and Learned and Far from Simple: Intellectual Narration in “The Plain People of Ireland” and The Third Policeman,’ The Parish Review: Journal of Flann O’Brien Studies 5, no.

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