Like the Brother: Flann O’Brien and John Millington Synge

Abstract

This article explores Brian O’Nolan’s (Flann O’Brien’s, Myles na gCopaleen’s) relation to John Millington Synge. Synge (1871–1909) was the premier dramatist of the Irish Revival, and O’Nolan’s response to Synge is metonymic of his response to that pre-revolutionary cultural formation. The article provides a mainly chronological factual account of O’Nolan’s references to Synge, with particular focus on a significant Cruiskeen Lawn column from 1942. It interprets and contextualises each of these textual occasions to draw out their cultural significance. Standing back from these particular textual instances, the article then aims to characterise O’Nolan’s relation to Synge as a whole, and to consider what this tells us about O’Nolan’s relation to the Revival.