Centre for Irish Studies at the Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures at CU FA invites you to a conference that will be held on 23–24 June 2023 at the Faculty of Arts, Charles University (náměstí Jana Palacha 1/2, Prague 1).
Keynote speakers
Irish author, playwright and rebel Brendan Behan was born on 9 February 1923. Marking the centenary of his birth, the conference intends to reconsider the rich literary legacy of the proverbial “drinker with a writing problem.” Indeed, for a long time, Behan’s literary achievements were overshadowed by his larger-than-life persona. Recent publications such as John Brannigan’s Brendan Behan: Cultural Nationalism and the Revisionist Writer (2002, 2014) and John McCourt’s edited volume Reading Brendan Behan (2019) have helped to redirect critical attention to the author’s oeuvre. However, to this day, much of Behan’s writing remains critically neglected, the focus having often been exclusively on his plays The Quare Fellow (1954) and The Hostage (1958), as well as his autobiographical novel Borstal Boy (1958). Thus, the conference intends to highlight Behan’s lesser-known works, be it his Irish-language writing, his short stories, columns or radio plays, as well as encourage new approaches to his entire oeuvre. The unmatched empathy with which Behan writes not only about Dublin’s working-class community, but also criminals, rebels, artists, drunkards, British army pensioners and prison guards is only one of the features that make his writing relevant to this day. “Dublin’s Laughing Boy” was known well across the borders of Ireland and his unique wit, openness to collaboration and insight have surely earned him a place among the greats of Irish literature.
Conference committee:
Event detail
- Event start
- 13. 4. 2023
- Event type
- Conference
