With James Joyce’s guitar, restoration of which he sponsored
Fran O’Rourke’s first ‘artistic’ connection with James Joyce, as a teenager in the mid sixties, was on a children’s TV programme (hosted by a ventriloquist’s dummy) when he sang a folk song with a line about ‘old mother Flipperflapper’; a variation of which occurs in Finnegans Wake. The first copy of Ulysses which he held in his hand was a first edition—in Zürich, where in August 1970 he developed the habit of daily visits to Joyce’s grave in Fluntern cemetery.
O’Rourke is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at University College Dublin. A graduate of University College Galway he studied in Vienna, Cologne, Louvain, and Leuven, where he received his PhD. He has held Fulbright and Onassis fellowships and in 2003 was Visiting Research Professor at Marquette University. He is primarily interested in the tradition of classical metaphysics and has published widely on Plato, Aristotle, Neoplatonism, Aquinas, and Heidegger. His book Pseudo-Dionysius and the Metaphysics of Aquinas (Brill, 1992) was reissued by University of Notre Dame Press (2005). Allwisest Stagyrite: Joyce’s Quotations from Aristotle was published by the National Library of Ireland in 2005. Aristotelian Interpretations, a collection of essays (Irish Academic Press) was published in 2016. His book Joyce, Aristotle, and Aquinas, was issued by University of Florida Press in 2022. He is completing a collection of essays, Aquinas and the Platonist Tradition, to be published in 2025.
O’Rourke has lectured widely both on philosophical influences in James Joyce and on Joyce’s use of Irish traditional song. He has given Joyce related concerts with John Feeley in the National Concert Hall, Dublin, and worldwide from Shanghai to San Diego. He has given solo recitals in the Conservatorio, Trieste, and for many Irish embassies, including those in Athens, Rome, Moscow, Sofia, Warsaw, Mexico and Santiago. He has performed with harper Derek Bell in the National Concert Hall and Dublin Castle.
In 2012 he arranged and sponsored the restoration of James Joyce’s guitar preserved since 1966 in the Tower at Sandycove. Images of the guitar before and after restoration are available at: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/rginxjt0celgh41/dXvLaCiQTA?m