De Selby Language

De Selby Language: Deciphering the Enigma of a Fictional Philosopher

Introduction:

Have you ever encountered a philosophical system so exquisitely absurd, so meticulously detailed in its illogicality, that it becomes strangely compelling? That's the allure of the De Selby language, the fictional philosophical framework created by the equally fictional Lord John De Selby. While not a "real" language in the sense of having native speakers or a defined grammar, the De Selby "language" represents a fascinating exploration of esoteric thought, linguistic obfuscation, and the very nature of philosophical argumentation. This post will delve deep into the intricacies of De Selby's pronouncements, exploring its unique characteristics, analyzing its impact on literary and philosophical discourse, and ultimately, attempting to decipher the enigmatic appeal of this fictional intellectual construct. We'll dissect the key components of this elaborate hoax, revealing its satirical genius and uncovering the subtle yet powerful criticisms it implicitly makes of academic pomposity and the limitations of purely logical reasoning.


1. The Genesis of De Selby: A Hoax Built on Absurdity

The De Selby language isn't a naturally evolved system; it's a deliberate fabrication, a literary device employed to comedic effect. Its originator, often attributed to various authors, most notably through the works of David Langford and others, cleverly crafted a body of pseudo-philosophical writings attributed to the fictional Lord John De Selby. These writings are characterized by incredibly complex and convoluted arguments, often employing neologisms and highly specialized terminology that renders them virtually incomprehensible. The humor lies in the sheer audacity of presenting such nonsensical material with the seriousness and meticulousness usually reserved for weighty academic tomes. This inherent absurdity is a critical component of the De Selby "language," as it serves to highlight the potential for intellectual pretension and the limitations of relying solely on elaborate jargon to mask a lack of substance.


2. Key Characteristics of the De Selby "Language"

The De Selby "language" isn’t characterized by a coherent grammar or syntax. Rather, its "uniqueness" rests on several defining features:

Neologisms and Jargon: The language is replete with newly coined words and highly specialized terminology, often obscure and self-referential. These terms are rarely, if ever, defined, adding to the overall sense of impenetrable complexity.
Circular Reasoning and Logical Fallacies: De Selby's "arguments" are frequently based on circular reasoning, relying on unproven premises to support conclusions that then reinforce those same premises. Logical fallacies are rampant, adding to the comedic effect and highlighting the absurdity of intellectual posturing.
Pseudo-Scientific Jargon: The language often incorporates scientific-sounding terms used out of context or in ways that contradict established scientific principles. This deliberate misuse of scientific terminology underscores the satirical intent, mocking the tendency to drape pseudoscience in the guise of intellectual legitimacy.
Overly Complex Sentence Structure: Sentences are often incredibly long and convoluted, filled with subordinate clauses and parenthetical asides, making them difficult to parse and understand. This complexity contributes to the overall feeling of overwhelming obfuscation.


3. De Selby's Impact on Literature and Philosophy

Despite its fictional nature, the De Selby language has had a subtle yet significant impact on both literary and philosophical circles. It serves as a powerful satire of academic pomposity, challenging the notion that complexity automatically equates to intellectual depth. By showcasing the absurdity of overly convoluted arguments and the misuse of jargon, De Selby implicitly encourages a more critical approach to philosophical discourse. The language also inspires creative writing and satire, serving as a source of inspiration for authors who wish to explore the limits of language and the pitfalls of intellectual pretension.


4. Deconstructing the De Selby Enigma: An Attempt at Understanding

While a full "decoding" of the De Selby language is impossible given its intentionally nonsensical nature, we can still analyze its components and appreciate its satirical intent. Understanding De Selby requires recognizing that the goal is not to find a coherent meaning but to appreciate the humor and the critique embedded within the elaborate façade of intellectualism. The very act of trying to unravel the complexities of the language becomes a commentary on the futility of attempting to decipher meaning in inherently meaningless constructs.


5. The Enduring Appeal of De Selby

The enduring appeal of the De Selby language stems from its ability to simultaneously entertain and provoke thought. Its absurdity is both funny and insightful, challenging readers to question the conventions of philosophical argumentation and the nature of intellectual authority. The sheer audacity of the hoax, the intricate detail of the fabrication, and the implicit critique of academic posturing all contribute to its lasting fascination. It's a testament to the power of satire to expose the flaws in systems of thought and the importance of critical thinking.


Sample Book Outline: "Unraveling De Selby: A Compendium of Absurdity"

Introduction: A brief history of De Selby and the origins of the fictional language.
Chapter 1: The Linguistic Landscape: An analysis of the key linguistic features of De Selby's writing.
Chapter 2: Philosophical Fallacies: An examination of the logical fallacies and circular reasoning prevalent in De Selby's "arguments."
Chapter 3: Satire and Subversion: A discussion of the satirical intent of the De Selby language and its critique of academic pomposity.
Chapter 4: De Selby's Influence: An exploration of the impact of De Selby on literature and philosophy.
Chapter 5: The Enduring Mystery: A concluding chapter reflecting on the enduring appeal and the ultimate undecidability of De Selby's work.


Detailed Explanation of Outline Points:

Each chapter of the proposed book would delve deeper into the aspects outlined above. For example, Chapter 1 would provide concrete examples of neologisms and analyze sentence structure to illustrate the deliberate obfuscation employed by De Selby. Chapter 2 would detail specific types of logical fallacies found in De Selby's writing, demonstrating how these fallacies contribute to the overall absurdity and undermine the validity of his "arguments." Chapter 3 would analyze the satirical targets of De Selby's work, highlighting the implicit critique of academic pretension and the dangers of relying solely on jargon to mask a lack of substance. Chapter 4 would explore the ways in which De Selby has influenced other writers and thinkers, highlighting the use of similar techniques in contemporary satire and fiction. Finally, Chapter 5 would offer a reflective conclusion, acknowledging the limitations of fully comprehending De Selby while celebrating the enduring appeal of this peculiar and enigmatic fictional creation.


FAQs:

1. Is De Selby a real philosopher? No, De Selby is a fictional character and his philosophical system is entirely fabricated.
2. What is the purpose of the De Selby language? Its primary purpose is satirical, mocking intellectual pretension and the misuse of jargon.
3. Can you actually understand De Selby's writings? Not in a literal sense; the writings are designed to be deliberately incomprehensible.
4. Who created the De Selby persona? The exact origin is debated, but it's often attributed to David Langford and other contributors to various literary circles.
5. What makes De Selby's language unique? Its unique characteristics include the use of neologisms, circular reasoning, and overly complex sentence structures.
6. What is the humor in De Selby's writings? The humor derives from the contrast between the serious presentation of nonsensical ideas.
7. Does De Selby have any real-world parallels? Yes, it satirizes real-world instances of academic pomposity and the misuse of jargon in various fields.
8. Why is De Selby still relevant today? Its critique of intellectual pretension and the importance of clear communication remains highly relevant.
9. Where can I find examples of De Selby's writings? Examples can be found online through various literary and philosophical communities and fan pages dedicated to De Selby.


Related Articles:

1. The Philosophy of Absurdity: An exploration of the philosophical movement that embraces the illogical and irrational.
2. Satire in Literature: An overview of the use of satire as a literary device.
3. The Use of Neologisms in Fiction: An examination of the creative use of newly coined words in literature.
4. Logical Fallacies and Their Application: A guide to identifying and understanding common logical fallacies.
5. Deconstructing Postmodernism: An analysis of the postmodern movement and its impact on literature and philosophy.
6. The Nature of Meaning in Language: A philosophical discussion of how meaning is created and conveyed through language.
7. Literary Hoaxes and Their Significance: An exploration of famous literary hoaxes and their cultural impact.
8. The Role of Humor in Philosophical Discourse: An examination of the use of humor to convey philosophical ideas.
9. Critical Thinking and Argumentation Skills: A guide to developing strong critical thinking and argumentation skills.


  de selby language: Utterly Other Discourse Ellen G. Friedman, Richard Martin, 1995 The British novelist and critic Christine Brooke-Rose (born 1923) is increasingly being regarded as one of the most significant writers of the contemporary period. In her dozen novels she has explored themes as diverse as biligualism (as a metaphor for alienation) and the influence of computer technology on the humanities. As these themes suggest, Brooke-Rose is sometimes perceived as a difficult writer, especially given the dazzling virtuosity of the linguistic wordplay that enlivens her later novels. Utterly Other Discourse (a phrase from her 1984 novel Amalgamemnon) provides a valuable introduction to her work; in fifteen essays--some previously published, some written for this book--scholars from America, England, and Europe examine her work from a variety of critical angles.
  de selby language: Literature and its Language Garry L. Hagberg, 2022-10-29 This stimulating volume brings together an international team of emerging, mid-career, and senior scholars to investigate the relations between philosophical approaches to language and the language of literature. It has proven easy for philosophers of language to leave literary language to one side, just as it has proven easy for literary scholars to discuss questions of meaning separately from relevant issues in the philosophy of language. This volume brings the two together in mutually enlightening ways: considerations of literary meaning are deepened by adding philosophical approaches, just as philosophical issues are enriched by bringing them into contact or interweaving them with literary cases in all their subtlety.
  de selby language: Sub-versions Ciaran Ross, 2010 From Swift's repulsive shit-flinging Yahoos to Beckett's dying but never quite dead moribunds, Irish literature has long been perceived as being synonymous with subversion and all forms of subversiveness. But what constitutes a subversive text or a subversive writer in twenty-first-century Ireland? The essays in this volume set out to redefine and rethink the subversive potential of modern Irish literature. Crossing three central genres, one common denominator running through these essays whether dealing with canonical writers like Yeats, Beckett and Flann O'Brien, or lesser known contemporary writers like Sebastian Barry or Robert McLiam Wilson, is the continual questioning of Irish identity - Irishness - going from its colonial paradigm and stereotype of the subaltern in MacGill, to its uneasy implications for gender representation in the contemporary novel and the contemporary drama. A subsidiary theme inextricably linked to the identity problematic is that of exile and its radical heritage for all Irish writing irrespective of its different genres. Sub-Versions offers a cross-cultural and trans-national response to the expanding interest in Irish and postcolonial studies by bringing together specialists from different national cultures and scholarly contexts - Ireland, Britain, France and Central Europe. The order of the essays is by genre. This study is aimed both at the general literary reader and anyone particularly interested in Irish Studies.
  de selby language: The History and Antiquities of Selby William Wilberforce Morrell, 1867
  de selby language: Reading Backwards Muireann Maguire, Timothy Langen, 2021-06-18 This book outlines with theoretical and literary historical rigor a highly innovative approach to the writing of Russian literary history and to the reading of canonical Russian texts. Anticipatory plagiarism” is a concept developed by the French Oulipo group, but it has never to my knowledge been explored with reference to Russian studies. The editors and contributors to the proposed volume – a blend of senior and beginning scholars, Russians and non-Russians – offer a set of essays on Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy which provocatively test the utility of AP as a critical tool, relating these canonical authors to more recent instances, some of them decidedly non-canonical. The senior scholars who are the editors and most of the contributors are truly distinguished. The volume is likely to receive serious attention and to be widely read. I recommend it with unqualified enthusiasm. William Mills Todd III, Harry Tuchman Levin Professor of Literature, Harvard University As the founder of the notion of plagiarism by anticipation, which was stolen from me in the sixties by fellow colleagues, I am delighted to learn that my modest contribution to literary theory will be used to better understand the interplay of interferences in Russian literature. Indeed, one would have to be naive to think that the great Russian authors would have invented everything. In fact, they were able to draw their ideas from their predecessors, but also from their successors, testifying to the open-mindedness that characterizes the Slavic soul. This book restores the truth. Pierre Bayard, Professor of Literature, University of Paris 8 This edited volume employs the paradoxical notion of ‘anticipatory plagiarism’—developed in the 1960s by the ‘Oulipo’ group of French writers and thinkers—as a mode for reading Russian literature. Reversing established critical approaches to the canon and literary influence, its contributors ask us to consider how reading against linear chronologies can elicit fascinating new patterns and perspectives. Reading Backwards: An Advance Retrospective on Russian Literature re-assesses three major nineteenth-century authors—Gogol, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy—either in terms of previous writers and artists who plagiarized them (such as Raphael, Homer, or Hall Caine), or of their own depredations against later writers (from J.M. Coetzee to Liudmila Petrushevskaia). Far from suggesting that past authors literally stole from their descendants, these engaging essays, contributed by both early-career and senior scholars of Russian and comparative literature, encourage us to identify the contingent and familiar within classic texts. By moving beyond rigid notions of cultural heritage and literary canons, they demonstrate that inspiration is cyclical, influence can flow in multiple directions, and no idea is ever truly original. This book will be of great value to literary scholars and students working in Russian Studies. The introductory discussion of the origins and context of ‘plagiarism by anticipation’, alongside varied applications of the concept, will also be of interest to those working in the wider fields of comparative literature, reception studies, and translation studies.
  de selby language: The History and Antiquities of Selby, in the West Riding of the County of York ... William Wilberforce Morrell, 1867
  de selby language: Writing Against Time Howard Moss, 1969
  de selby language: Reading the Absurd Joanna Gavins, 2013-07-30 What is the literary absurd? What are its key textual features? How can it be analysed? How do different readers respond to absurdist literature?Taking the theories and methodologies of stylistics as its underlying analytical framework, Reading the Absurd tackles each of these questions. Selected key works in English literature are examined in depth to reveal significant aspects of absurd style. Its analytical approach combines stylistic inquiry with a cognitive perspective on language, literature and reading which sheds new light on the human experience of literary reading.By exploring the literary absurd as a linguistic and experiential phenomena, while at the same time reflecting upon its essential historical and cultural situation, Joanna Gavins brings a new perspective to the absurd aesthetic.
  de selby language: Digressions in European Literature A. Grohmann, C. Wells, 2010-11-17 With studies of, amongst others, Miguel de Cervantes, Anton Chekhov, Charles Baudelaire and Henry James, this landmark collection of essays is a unique and wide-ranging exploration and celebration of the many forms of digression in major works by fifteen of the finest European writers from the early modern period to the present day.
  de selby language: The Wolfe of Badenoch sir Thomas Dick Lauder (7th bart.), 1863
  de selby language: Testamenta Eboracensia York (England), 1836
  de selby language: Testamenta Eboracensia, Or, Wills Registered at York , 1855
  de selby language: Testamenta Eboracensia Eng York, 1865
  de selby language: Testamenta Eboracensia Or Wills Registered at York York (Province), 1865
  de selby language: Testamenta Eboracensia James Raine, John William Clay, 1865
  de selby language: Testamenta Eboracensia of wills registered at York illustrative of the history, manners, language, statistics, &c., of the province of York, from the year MCCC downwards , 1865
  de selby language: The Absurd in Literature Neil Cornwell, 2006-10-31 This is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey of the phenomenon of the absurd in a full literary context (that is to say, primarily in fiction, as well as in theatre).
  de selby language: A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife Daniel Quinn, 2009-12-30 The guide of choice for anyone who plans to die someday--are YOU ready for the AFTERLIFE? To find out, take this simple quiz: 1. Like Earth, the Afterlife has celebrities, outcasts, deadheads, losers, and busybodies. True False 2. Is there an Afterlife after the Afterlife? Yes No 3. When you first arrive on the Other Side, you will be given: a) a set of wings b) a toaster c) a copy of A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife Don't worry if you're not sure how to respond. A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife has answers to these questions and more--and if you're lucky, some of them may turn out to be right! An irreverent, one-of-a-kind compendium from the award-winning author of Ishmael, A Newcomer's Guide to the Afterlife can be read as a parable, an allegory, a work of fiction--or exactly what it claims to be: a helpful handbook for the recently deceased. It is filled with uncommon wisdom, bizarre imaginings, uncanny perceptions, and unexpected humor. Is it fantastic escapism or a seminal event in human history? Read it and find out.... Face it. The Afterlife is the ultimate test. You might as well study.
  de selby language: Flann O'Brien Joseph Brooker, 2005 Through major works such as At-Swim-Two-Birds, The Third Policeman, and The Poor Mouth Flann O'Brien exploded the modern novel in a way that both echoed the the example of James Joyce and anticipated later developments in experimental fiction and theory.
  de selby language: Assembling Flann O'Brien Maebh Long, 2014-01-02 Flann O'Brien - also known as Brian O'Nolan or Myles na gCopaleen - is now widely recognised as one of the foremost of Ireland's modern authors. Assembling Flann O'Brien explores the author's innovative and experimental work by reading him in relation to some of the 20th century's most important theorists, including Derrida, Agamben, Freud, Lacan and Žižek. Assembling Flann O'Brien offers a detailed study of O'Brien's five major novels – including At Swim-Two-Birds and The Third Policeman – as well as his plays, short stories, journalistic output and unpublished archival material. The book presents new theoretical perspectives on his works, exploring his compelling engagements with questions of the proper name, the archive, law, and desire, and the problems of identity, language, sexuality and censorship which acutely troubled Ireland's new state. Combining a wide range of contemporary theory with a sensitivity to the cultural and political context in which the author wrote, Maebh Long opens up entirely new aspects of Flann O'Brien's writings, and explores the ingenious and the problematic within his oeuvre.
  de selby language: Geographies of Modernism Peter Brooker, Andrew Thacker, 2007-05-07 This volume explores the interface between modernism and geography in a range of writers, texts and artists across the twentieth century.
  de selby language: Classical Constructions S. J. Heyworth, 2007-10-04 Classical Constructions is a collection of ground-breaking and scholarly papers on Latin literature by a number of distinguished Classicists, produced in memory of Don Fowler, who died in 1999 at the age of 46. The authors were all inspired by the desire to commemorate a beloved colleague and friend and have produced papers of great freshness and insight. The essays, including that by Don Fowler himself, are much concerned with the reception of the classical world, extending into the realms of modern philosophy, art history, and cultural studies. There are fundamental studies of Horace's style and Ovid's exile. The volume is unusual in the informality of the style of a number of pieces, and the openness with which the contributors have reminisced about the honorand and reflected on his early death.
  de selby language: History of the High Court of Chancery and Other Institutions of England Conway Robinson, 1882
  de selby language: The Wolfe of Badenoch Sir Thomas Dick-Lauder, 1886
  de selby language: Afterlife and Narrative in Contemporary Fiction Alice Bennett, 2012-07-06 Afterlife and Narrative explores why life after death is such a potent cultural concept today, and why it is such an attractive prospect for modern fiction. The book mines a rich vein of imagined afterlives, from the temporal experiments of Martin Amis's Time's Arrow to narration from heaven in Alice Sebold's The Lovely Bones .
  de selby language: Emergency Writing Anna Teekell, 2018-06-15 Taking seriously Ireland’s euphemism for World War II, “the Emergency,” Anna Teekell’s Emergency Writing asks both what happens to literature written during a state of emergency and what it means for writing to be a response to an emergency. Anchored in close textual analysis of works by Samuel Beckett, Elizabeth Bowen, Flann O’Brien, Louis MacNeice, Denis Devlin, and Patrick Kavanagh, and supported by archival material and historical research, Emergency Writing shows how Irish late modernism was a response to the sociopolitical conditions of a newly independent Irish Free State and to a fully emerged modernism in literature and art. What emerges in Irish writing in the wake of Independence, of the Gaelic Revival, of Yeats and of Joyce, is a body of work that invokes modernism as a set of discursive practices with which to counter the Free State’s political pieties. Emergency Writing provides a new approach to literary modernism and to the literature of conflict, considering the ethical dilemma of performing neutrality—emotionally, politically, and rhetorically—in a world at war.
  de selby language: South Atlantic Review , 1991
  de selby language: The Dalkey Archive Brian O'Nolan, 2022-08-01 DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of The Dalkey Archive by Brian O'Nolan. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.
  de selby language: Testamenta Eboracensia Outlook Verlag, 2024-10-10 Reprint of the original, first published in 1836.
  de selby language: Explorations in the Field of Nonsense , 2022-07-04
  de selby language: Eboracum Francis Drake, 1736
  de selby language: Modern Death in Irish and Latin American Literature Jacob L. Bender, 2020-09-22 This comparative literature study explores how writers from across Ireland and Latin America have, both in parallel and in concert, deployed symbolic representations of the dead in their various anti-colonial projects. In contrast to the ghosts and revenants that haunt English and Anglo-American letters—where they are largely either monstrous horrors or illusory frauds—the dead in these Irish/Latinx archives can serve as potential allies, repositories of historical grievances, recorders of silenced voices, and disruptors of neocolonial discourse.
  de selby language: Flann O'Brien, Bakhtin, and Menippean Satire M. Keith Booker, 1995-10-01 This work applies Mikhail Bakhtin's theory of literary discourse and the concept of carnivalisation to the work of Flann O'Brien. The author emphasizes the political and social implications of the writings, arguing that O'Brien maintained a reflexive focus on language throughout his career.
  de selby language: The Great Unexpected Dan Mooney, 2019-06-25 A curmudgeon and his eccentric new roommate join together to plan an epic escape in this charming, poignant tale. Joel lives in a nursing home, and he’s not one bit happy about it. He hates being told when to eat, when to sleep, when to take his pills. He’s fed up with life and begins to plan a way out when his new roommate, a retired soap opera actor named Frank, moves in and turns the nursing-home community upside down. Though the two men couldn’t be more opposite, a fast friendship is formed when Frank is the only one who listens to and stands up for Joel. When he tells Frank about his burgeoning plan, they embark together on a mission to find the perfect escape, and along the way will discover that it’s never too late for new beginnings. Filled with colorful characters, sparkling humor and deep emotion, The Great Unexpected is the story of friendship, finding oneself later in life and experiencing newfound joy in the most unexpected places.
  de selby language: The Complete Novels of Flann O'Brien Flann O'Brien, 2008-01-08 Flann O’Brien, along with Joyce and Beckett, is part of the holy trinity of modern Irish literature. His five novels–collected here in one volume–are a monument to his inspired lunacy and gleefully demented genius. O’Brien’s masterpiece, At Swim-Two-Birds, is an exuberant literary send-up and one of the funniest novels of the twentieth century. The novel’s narrator is writing a novel about another man writing a novel, in a Celtic knot of interlocking stories. The riotous cast of characters includes figures “stolen” from Gaelic legends, along with assorted students, fairies, ordinary Dubliners, and cowboys, some of whom try to break free of their author’s control and destroy him. The narrator of The Third Policeman, who has forgotten his name, is a student of philosophy who has committed murder and wanders into a surreal hell where he encounters such oddities as the ghost of his victim, three policeman who experiment with space and time, and his own soul (who is named “Joe”). The Poor Mouth, a bleakly hilarious portrait of peasants in a village dominated by pigs, potatoes, and endless rain, is a giddy parody aimed at those who would romanticize Gaelic culture. A naïve young orphan narrates the deadpan farce The Hard Life, and The Dalkey Archive is an outrageous satiric fantasy featuring a mad scientist who uses relativity to age his whiskey, a policeman who believes men can turn into bicycles, and an elderly, bar-tending James Joyce. With a new Introduction by Keith Donohue
  de selby language: Journey Westward Frank Shovlin, 2012-01-01 Journey Westward suggests that James Joyce was attracted to the west of Ireland as a place of authenticity and freedom. It examines how this acute sensibility is reflected in Dubliners via a series of coded nods and winks, posing new and revealing questions about one of the most enduring and resonant collections of short stories ever written. The answers are a fusion of history and literary criticism, utilizing close readings that balance the techniques of realism and symbolism. The result is a startlingly original study that opens up fresh ways of thinking about Joyce's masterpieces.
  de selby language: The A to Z of Postmodernist Literature and Theater Fran Mason, 2009-07-23 Postmodernist literature embraces a wide range of forms and perspectives, including texts that are primarily self-reflexive; texts that use pastiche, burlesque, parody, intertextuality and hybrid forms to create textual realities that either run in opposition to or in parallel with an external reality; fabulations that develop both of these strategies; texts that ironize their relationship to reality; works that use the aspects already noted to more fully engage with political or cultural realities; texts that deal with history as a fiction; and texts that elude categorization even within the variety already explored. For example, in fiction, a postmodernist novel might tell a story about a writer struggling with writing (only, perhaps, to find that he is a character in a book by another writer struggling to write a book). The A to Z of Postmodernist Literature and Theater examines the different areas of postmodernist literature and the variety of forms that have been produced. This is accomplished through a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and several hundred cross-referenced dictionary entries on individual postmodernist writers, the important postmodernist aesthetic practices, significant texts produced throughout the history of postmodernist writing, and important movements and ideas that have created a variety of literary approaches within the form. By placing these concerns within the historical, philosophical, and cultural contexts of postmodernism, this reference explores the frameworks within which postmodernist literature of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century operates.
  de selby language: The Dalkey Archive Flann O'Brien, 2022-08-10 The Dalkey Archive features a mad scientist, De Selby, who attempts to annihilate the world by removing all the oxygen from the air. He exploits the theory of relativity and invents the time-traveling machine, which he uses to age his whiskey in just a few hours.
  de selby language: The Third Policeman Brian O'Nolan, 2021-08-31 The Third Policeman by Brian O'Nolan. Published by Good Press. Good Press publishes a wide range of titles that encompasses every genre. From well-known classics & literary fiction and non-fiction to forgotten−or yet undiscovered gems−of world literature, we issue the books that need to be read. Each Good Press edition has been meticulously edited and formatted to boost readability for all e-readers and devices. Our goal is to produce eBooks that are user-friendly and accessible to everyone in a high-quality digital format.
  de selby language: Revolutionary Damnation Sheldon Brivic, 2017-05-11 In Irish fiction, the most famous example of the embrace of damnation in order to gain freedom—politically, religiously, and creatively—is Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus. His “non serviam,” though, is not just the profound rebellion of one frustrated young man, but, as Brivic demonstrates in this sweeping account of twentieth-century Irish fiction, the emblematic and necessary standpoint for any artist wishing to envision something truly new. Revolutionary fervor is what allowed a country with a population lower than that of Connecticut to produce so many of the greatest writers of the twentiety century. Because Irish culture was largely dictated by the Catholic Church and its conservatism, the most ambitious Irish writers, like Joyce, Beckett, and the ten others Brivic presents here, saw the advantages of damnation and seized them, rejecting powerful norms of church, state, and culture, as well as of literary form, voice, and character, to produce some of the most radical work of the twentieth century. Brivic links the work of writers such as Flann O’Brien, Patrick McCabe, and Anne Enright to the theories of Alain Badiou. His mathematical procedure for distinguishing what is truly innovative informs the progressive political and philosophical thrust that these writers at their best carry on from Joyce and Beckett to unfold a fierce tradition that extends into the twenty-first century.