Flann O'brien's Anti-esotericism:The Third Policeman and The Dalkey Archive
The (pseudo-)theological and (pseudo-)scientific imagery in Flann O'Brien's ‘The Third Policeman’ and ‘The Dalkey Archive’ has been the subject of extensive research in the past. However, these novels also exhibit an abundance of anti-esoteric traits which have not yet been adequately analyzed. This article shows that these novels are in fact steeped – both in form and in plot – in motifs and ideas often used in esoteric discourse. At the same time, the analysis demonstrates how O'Brien's novels, in their venomous satire, partake in what Wouter J. Hanegraaff has termed the anti-esoteric ‘Grand Polemical Narrative’. Finally, the analysis demonstrates how O'Brien creates an esoteric writing style of its own kind, thus proving correct those recent critics who have agreed that definitions of esotericism are non-essentialist constructions which enable critics to apply these terms in a specific historical context: ‘Nothing ‘is’ esoteric unless it is construed as such by somebody for some reason’ (Hanegraaff, 20...