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The Poor Mouth

116 statements
21 feature instances
0 referencing feature instances

The Poor Mouth	type	TVTItem
The Poor Mouth	label	The Poor Mouth
The Poor Mouth	page	ThePoorMouth
The Poor Mouth	comment	The Poor Mouth is the English-language title of a darkly comic 1941 Irish-language novel, An BÃ©al Bocht, by the Irish writer Brian O'Nolan, writing under his pseudonym "Myles na gCopaleen". The title (pronounced something like On bail bukhâ€™d) refers to the expression "putting on the poor mouth", meaning "affecting to be worse off than you actually are".It's an Affectionate Parody of a particular genre in Irish-language literature, the Peasant Autobiography, and is notable today for being one of the few works originally written in Irish which has achieved a wide readership, both amongst Irish speakers and in translation. It tells the story of the life of an Irish peasant, BÃ³napÃ¡rt Ã“ CÃºnasa (Bonaparte O'Coonasa) who grows up in a small town, Corkadoragha, in the west of Ireland.Brian Oâ€™Nolan was born into an Irish-speaking household, and Irish was his first language growing up. He became moderately famous with the publication in 1939 of his debut novel At Swim-Two-Birds, which earned him a side gig writing a famous newspaper column, "Cruiskeen Lawn", in Irelandâ€™s most prestigious newspaper The Irish Times. "Cruiskeen Lawn" was originally in Irish, before Oâ€™Nolan began writing the column in English, whereupon it took off.Oâ€™Nolan had a deep love of Irish literature, and itâ€™s been noted that the way he tended to express his love for something was to send it up. In the 1920s and 30s, the peasant communities in the west of Ireland were dwindling, along with the culture that they had supported for centuries. A number of the storytellers of these communities were encouraged by folklorists to tell their stories. The first to do was TomÃ¡s Ã“ Criomhthain (1856-1937, often anglicised as "TomÃ¡s Oâ€™Crohan"), first in a collection of anecdotes called Allagar na h-Inise ("Island Cross-Talk") and then in his autobiography An tOileÃ¡nach ("The Islandman"), which he wrote in his 60s and which was published in 1928. After him came Peig Sayers (1873-1958), who dictated her memoir Peig, and Muiris Ã“ SÃºilleabhÃ¡in (anglicised as "Maurice Oâ€™Sullivan", 1904-1950), whose book Fiche Bliain ag FÃ¡s ("Twenty Years A-Growing") came out in 1933. These books were on the Irish-language syllabus in Irish schools for decades, being eventually replaced in the 1990s by something slightly more relatable for teenagers.Among the characteristics of the peasant autobiographies was a sense of stoicism in the face of poverty and hardship: almost all of Ã“ Criomhthainâ€™s ten children died in childhood, and his wife also died at a young age, while Peig Sayersâ€™ book was notorious for its opening line I am an old woman now, with one foot in the grave and the other on its edge. (Ã“ SÃºilleabhÃ¡inâ€™s book, by contrast, is a bit more chipper.)The darkness of these books, but also the perception of them as being darker than they perhaps were, is what Oâ€™Nolan took aim it in An BÃ©al Bocht. Itâ€™s a brilliant parody of the stereotypical portrayal of the Irish peasant as being dirt poor, unable to speak English, constantly in danger, and at the mercy of forces beyond their control, including the law itself but also the predations of folklorists coming to record their language. As an Irish speaker himself, Oâ€™Nolan was wary of being patronised by people who thought that there was something strange and magical about Irish speakers, and who praised the piety and linguistic purity of Irish-speaking communities while doing little to actually help them survive or grow economically. An BÃ©al Bocht is an antidote to that.It remains one of the best-loved and most-read novels in Irish. It wasnâ€™t translated into English until 1973, by Patrick C. Power, whose work has been justly praised as superb.
The Poor Mouth	fetched	2024-01-28T17:45:03Z
The Poor Mouth	parsed	2024-01-28T17:45:03Z
The Poor Mouth	processingComment	Dropped link to AffectionateParody: Not a Feature - ITEM
The Poor Mouth	processingComment	Dropped link to HereBeDragons: Not a Feature - UNKNOWN
The Poor Mouth	processingUnknown	HereBeDragons
The Poor Mouth	isPartOf	DBTropes
The Poor Mouth / int_21d70919	type	Crapsack World
The Poor Mouth / int_21d70919	comment	Crapsack World: Itâ€™s always raining, the potatoes are running out, the house smells terrible and itâ€™s true to say that hardship is the life of the Gael.
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The Poor Mouth / int_220c23cb	type	Condescending Compassion
The Poor Mouth / int_220c23cb	comment	Condescending Compassion: What the Gaeligores note Visiting scholars of the Irish language feel for the people of Corkadoragha.
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The Poor Mouth / int_28cd01ca	type	Disappeared Dad
The Poor Mouth / int_28cd01ca	comment	Disappeared Dad: Bonaparte grows up with only his mother and grandfather.
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The Poor Mouth / int_2a6a8e89	type	Sadist Teacher
The Poor Mouth / int_2a6a8e89	comment	Sadist Teacher: The teacher in Bonaparteâ€™s school talks to him in English ("Phwat is yer nam?"), which he doesnâ€™t understand, and hits him on the head with an oar when he replies in Irish. Then again, he does this to everyone. He also tells every child in the school that their name from now on is "Jams Oâ€™Donnell", whether it is or not.
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The Poor Mouth / int_40cc0c7e	type	Bittersweet Ending
The Poor Mouth / int_40cc0c7e	comment	Bittersweet Ending: Bonaparte meets his father for the first time on the day he himself is going to prison for 29 years.
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The Poor Mouth / int_59788b2c	type	Hiding Behind the Language Barrier
The Poor Mouth / int_59788b2c	comment	Hiding Behind the Language Barrier: The English-speaking characters do this, with their dialogue being printed in English in the original book, with Bonaparte failing to understand them. The effect is slightly lost in translation.
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The Poor Mouth / int_60f92ddd	type	Oireland
The Poor Mouth / int_60f92ddd	comment	Oireland: Brutally parodied.
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The Poor Mouth / int_6977c45e	type	Purple Prose
The Poor Mouth / int_6977c45e	comment	Purple Prose: Of an Irish flavour, owing to Oâ€™Nolan using and exaggerating every figure of speech he could think of in the original Irish dialect.
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The Poor Mouth / int_76d6c3df	type	I Don't Like the Sound of That Place
The Poor Mouth / int_76d6c3df	comment	I Don't Like the Sound of That Place: Bonaparteâ€™s home town Corkadoragha, in Irish Chorcha Dorcha: it means "Dark Cork".
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The Poor Mouth / int_a7850fbf	type	Only Known by Their Nickname
The Poor Mouth / int_a7850fbf	comment	Only Known by Their Nickname: Every English-speaking authority figure in the book ignores Bonaparteâ€™s actual name and tells him "Yer nam is Jams Oâ€™Donnell". Bonaparteâ€™s mother tells him that this happens to every Gaelic person.
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The Poor Mouth / int_b1b1e28b	type	Gluttonous Pig
The Poor Mouth / int_b1b1e28b	comment	Gluttonous Pig: The Oâ€™Coonassasâ€™ pig Ambrose grows to such a size that once heâ€™s inside the house, he canâ€™t be pushed out through the doorway.
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The Poor Mouth / int_b240e89b	type	Ghetto Name
The Poor Mouth / int_b240e89b	comment	Ghetto Name: Bonaparte Oâ€™Coonassa. His fatherâ€™s first name is Michelangelo.
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The Poor Mouth / int_b3d1b7e3	type	Genius Bonus
The Poor Mouth / int_b3d1b7e3	comment	Genius Bonus: When Bonaparte enters the cave of the mysterious Maeldoon O'Poenassa, Maeldoon addresses him in Middle Irish. This is represented in the translation by archaic English.
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The Poor Mouth / int_c01db132	type	Messy Pig
The Poor Mouth / int_c01db132	comment	Messy Pig: The stench of Ambrose the pig is so bad that Bonaparteâ€™s mother actually lies down to die, although Bonaparteâ€™s grandfather the Old-Grey-Fellow drags her outside to safety. The family sleeps outside in the rain, just to get away from the smell. Eventually their neighbour Martin Oâ€™Bannassa seals off the house, and Ambrose dies from his own smell.
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The Poor Mouth / int_c75df49a	type	Shout-Out
The Poor Mouth / int_c75df49a	comment	Shout-Out: Bonaparteâ€™s repeated use of variations on "I do not think my like will be seen again" (NÃ dÃ³igh liom go mbeidh mo leitÃ©id arÃs ann) is this to TomÃ¡s Ã“ Criomhthain, who famously used it as the last line of An tOileÃ¡nach.
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The Poor Mouth / int_ddeaea82	type	Miscarriage of Justice
The Poor Mouth / int_ddeaea82	comment	Miscarriage of Justice: At the end, Bonaparte is accused of murder and theft and sentenced to 29 years in prison. He didnâ€™t actually commit the crime, although he did arguably steal the money from someone else.
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The Poor Mouth / int_e0140e6c	type	From the Mouths of Babes
The Poor Mouth / int_e0140e6c	comment	From the Mouths of Babes: Bonaparte talks in fluent sentences at the age of ten months and nobody thinks that this is unusual.
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The Poor Mouth / int_e3c20140	type	As Long as It Sounds Foreign
The Poor Mouth / int_e3c20140	comment	As Long as It Sounds Foreign: Subverted. A pig is dressed in a suit of clothes, and a Gaelgeoir mistakes it for an actual Irish speaker whose Irish must be unusually pure because it's so unintelligible.
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The Poor Mouth / int_e6b5d22f	type	Catchphrase
The Poor Mouth / int_e6b5d22f	comment	Catchphrase: "I do not think our/their/his/her/my like will be seen again". See Shout-Out.
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The Poor Mouth / int_fbd285b7	type	Comically Missing the Point
The Poor Mouth / int_fbd285b7	comment	Comically Missing the Point: The Old-Grey-Fellow tells Bonaparte that his father Michelangelo is "in the jug", meaning prison. Bonaparte fails to understand and looks for him in the milk jug, but doesn't find him.
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