Bakhtin and Modern Irish Satire

Abstract

"Carnival,” “dialogue” and “heteroglossia” are key terms in Bakhtin’s theory of dialogic literature in general and Menippean satire in particular. I will discuss two 20th-century Irish novels in terms of Bakhtin’s theory of satire: Darrel] Figgis’s The Return of the Hero (1923) and Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds (1939). O’Brien’s novel is far better known than Figgis’s; the book is often mentioned in discussions of postmodernism as being an early and therefore noteworthy example of the use of techniques that came to be regarded as staples of postmodernist writing several decades later. While that is a valid approach, it is my intention here to show, in a comparison with The Return of the Hero, that At Swim-Two-Birds can equally fruitfully be read as a Menippean satire, and that when regarded in those terms the book is neither a particularly early example in 20th-century Ireland, nor an especially unique one.