Insect language and communication in Myles na gCopaleen’s Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green

Abstract

Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green was written by Myles na gCopaleen, also known as Flann O’Brien or Brian O’Nolan. This dramatic text is an adaptation of the Čapek brothers’ play: života hmyzu (1921) and, although it owes its episodic structure and general concept to its Czech source, it is characterized by its use of language and its relationship to Irish regionalism. Specifically, the relationship between insects and their spatiality, and the way their orality provides a specific form of identity, as in the case of the Dublin beetles and the Cork crickets, among others. The literary production of Myles na gCopaleen questions the significance and the use of human language and, in particular, in Rhapsody in Stephen’s Green it explores the possibility of an animal language and its relationship to Irish society. If the only boundary between man and animal could be established by language and the nominal capacity of the word, how does these insects’ particular use of language challenge the meaning and performance of oral interactions along with their identity correspondence?