An Béal Bocht is a 1941 novel in Irish by Brian O'Nolan, published under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish-language novels of the 20th century, and the 1973 English translation by Patrick Power has been praised for its accuracy and sensitivity. All of O'Nolan's other novels were published under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien; this is the only one for which he employed the "Myles" pseudonym that he normally reserved for his journalism.

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  • 0853427941
dbpedia-owl:Book/pages
  • 114 (xsd:integer)
dbpedia-owl:Work/author
dbpedia-owl:Work/language
dbpedia-owl:Work/previousWork
dbpedia-owl:Work/publishDate
  • 1941-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
  • 1973-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
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dbpedia-owl:author
dbpedia-owl:isbn
  • 0853427941
dbpedia-owl:language
dbpedia-owl:pages
  • 114 (xsd:integer)
dbpedia-owl:previousWork
dbpedia-owl:publishDate
  • 1941-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
  • 1973-01-01 00:00:00 (xsd:date)
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dbpprop:abstract
  • An Béal Bocht is a 1941 novel in Irish by Brian O'Nolan, published under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish-language novels of the 20th century, and the 1973 English translation by Patrick Power has been praised for its accuracy and sensitivity. All of O'Nolan's other novels were published under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien; this is the only one for which he employed the "Myles" pseudonym that he normally reserved for his journalism. In the case of An Béal Bocht, O'Nolan altered the name slightly; the novel was published under the name Myles na gCopaleen, whereas his celebrated Irish Times column Cruiskeen Lawn was published under the more anglicised byline of Myles na Gopaleen. The suffix "na Gopaleen" is not a real Irish surname, but derives from a character named Myles-na-Coppaleen in Dion Boucicault's 1860 play The Colleen Bawn; it is ultimately derived from the Irish na gcapaillín, "of the little horses". As if to confuse matters, the English translation of An Béal Bocht is published as the work of "Flann O'Brien". The book is a parody of the genre of Gaeltacht autobiographies, such as Tomás Ó Criomhthain's autobiography An t-Oileánach (The Islandman), or Peig Sayers' autobiography Peig, which recounts her life, especially the latter half, as a series of misfortunes in which much of her family die by disease, drowning or other mishap. Books of this genre were part of the Irish language syllabus in the Irish school system and thus mandatory reading for generations of children from independence in 1921. O'Nolan was in fact a great admirer of An t-Oileánach, which is widely regarded as being the greatest work of the genre, but critic Declan Kiberd has noted how O'Nolan's admiration for a writer tended to express itself as parody of the writer's work. The Irish expression "to put on the poor mouth," ("an béal bocht a chur ort" in Irish) is mildly pejorative and refers to the practice, often associated with peasant farmers, of exaggerating the direness of one's situation, particularly financially, in order to evoke sympathy, charity and perhaps the forbearance of creditors and landlords or generosity of customers. The title may also be a parody of that of the Irish language reader An Saol Mór (The Great Life) (in Irish, béal and saol are near-rhymes). One of the recurring figures of speech in the book is the line from Ó Criomhthain's An t-Oileánach, ... mar ná beidh ár leithéidí arís ann, "... for our likes will not be (seen) again"; variations of it appear throughout An Béal Bocht.
dbpprop:author
dbpprop:country
  • Ireland
dbpprop:englishPubDate
  • 1973 (xsd:integer)
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  • Satire, Parody
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dbpprop:isbn
  • 853427941 (xsd:integer)
dbpprop:language
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  • Print ()
dbpprop:name
  • The Poor Mouth
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  • 9 & passim
  • 3 (xsd:integer)
  • 7 (xsd:integer)
dbpprop:pages
  • 114 (xsd:integer)
dbpprop:precededBy
dbpprop:pubDate
  • 1941 (xsd:integer)
dbpprop:publisher
  • An Preas Náisiúnta
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dbpprop:titleOrig
  • An Béal Bocht
dbpprop:translator
  • Patrick C. Power
dbpprop:wikiPageUsesTemplate
rdf:type
rdfs:comment
  • An Béal Bocht is a 1941 novel in Irish by Brian O'Nolan, published under the pseudonym Myles na gCopaleen. It is widely regarded as one of the greatest Irish-language novels of the 20th century, and the 1973 English translation by Patrick Power has been praised for its accuracy and sensitivity. All of O'Nolan's other novels were published under the pseudonym Flann O'Brien; this is the only one for which he employed the "Myles" pseudonym that he normally reserved for his journalism.
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  • An Béal Bocht
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  • An Béal Bocht
  • The Poor Mouth
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