摘要：This essay examines two novels by Anthony Cronin in order to argue that a tendency towards either proliferation or subtractiondetermines late Irish modernist aesthetics.Having established that the repetition of material in Cronin's texts indicates a tendency towards subtraction, the essay positions Brian O'Nolan's work within a modernist tradition that favours proliferation, and concludes by arguing that the role irony plays in successful proliferation is problematic for a socialist literary aesthetic.
