Denis O'Shaughnessy Going to Maynooth - Tapa blanda

Denis O'Shaughnessy going to Maynooth is one of the most important nineteenth-century short stories. It is a novel recreation of a perennial theme dear to the romantics throughout Europe, the hero in conflict with his environment. But Denis O'Shaughnessy is no Manifred or Childe Harold but a comic hero who may be at the mercy of his circumstances in every way except one he can observe his own situation with a sense of comedy and an irony that he does not hesitate to turn on himself on occasion. This clarity of vision makes the story both a brilliant anti-auto-biography and a gripping social document. It looks back to the Bilduns-Roman tradition of the Romantic movement started by Goethe in Poetry and Truth and forward to Joyce and Moore, as Professor Harmon shows in his introduction. Carleton's style may often be criticised for its lack of control over the material but in these two stories it is clearly vindicated. Neal Malone is an extraordinary blend of fairy-story, folk-tale, social commentary and pure comedy. It can only be compared to one of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, a fair tribute to the range and versatility of Carleton's style.