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Sites about Finnegans Wake

by James Joyce

This book has very little narrative structure in the usual sense; it therefore has no exact plot. Through metaphor, suggestion, and copious allusion, the book relates the stories of a family, which is every family.

Characters: HCE, ALP, Mutt, Jeff, Shem, Shaun (and variations on those names)
Keywords: stream of consciousness, postmodern

Critical sites about Finnegans Wake

The Decentered Universe of Finnegans Wake: A Structuralist Analysis
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/JoyceColl.NorrisDecenter
“Thanks to the patient toil of its dedicated explicators, the major contours of Joyce’s Finnegans Wake have gradually come into focus in the thirty-five years since its publication. Yet while more allusions, motifs, and linguistic details are continually coming to light, the intellectual orientation of the work remains largely obscure.”
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Norris, Margot
From: Johns Hopkins University Press 1976
Keywords:
 
John Cage’s Dublin, Lyn Hejinian’s Leningrad, Poetic Cities as Cyberspaces
http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/authors/perloff/cyber.html
“The Modernist city, in short, is characterized by its density (both real and symbolic), its specificity and depth.”
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Marjorie Perloff
From: Electronic Poetry Center; Festschrift for OB Hardisonr http://wings.buffalo.edu/epc/
Keywords:
 
The Sigla of Finnegans Wake
“James Joyce is probably the greatest stylist in the English language. Finnegans Wake is his last book, to which he devoted more energy than to any other. It is immensely difficult to read: I should in fact say that it is not a reasonable thing to expect any unaided person to attempt Finnegans Wake. There is in consequence a pressing need for exegetical studies which actually work, as opposed to producing a mere tranquillizing effect.”
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: McHugh, Roland
From: University of Texas Press 1976
Keywords:
 
Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-idx?id=JoyceColl.HartStructuretype=header&issueid=JoyceColl.HartStructure
“Imitative form was the one great literary theory which Joyce applied throughout his career with varying degrees of consistency and artistic success, but never more consistently nor perhaps more brilliantly than in Finnegans Wake, in which the verbal simulation of all kinds of forms, acts, and even abstractions is carried to extraordinary lengths.”
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Hart, Clive
From: Northwestern University Press 1962
Keywords:
 
The “Wake” in Transit
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-idx?id=JoyceColl.HaymanWakeInTrntype=header&issueid=JoyceColl.HaymanWakeInTrn
“The present book is meant to contribute to an ongoing dialogue, but perhaps its special focus on a range of early traces will set it apart from other more general or more narrowly conceived projects. We will be examining those aspects of the creative process revealed by a study of the early notebooks and manuscripts in order to disclose how Joyce managed the transition from the diurnal to the nocturnal, the waking to the sleeping, the individual consciousness to the universal subconscious. In the process we will address the question of the seeming randomness of Joyce’s notetaking, establish relationships, study contexts, and attempt to draw rational conclusions concerning Joyce’s methods at different moments in the book’s early development.”
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Hayman, David
From: Cornell University Press 1990
Keywords:
 

 
Other (non-critical) sites about Finnegans Wake

A Finnegans Wake Gazetteer
http://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/JoyceColl.MinkGazetteer
“The word-world of Finnegans Wake has its own geography, and a very queer geography it is too, since it violates the geographical postulate of identification by fixed coordinates. Not only do the boundaries of Dublin expand to include the rest of the terrestrial globe and the indefinite loci of fiction and mythology, but the very dimensions of space itself become uncertainly elastic, and sometimes transform themselves into one or more dimensions of time.”
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Mink, Louis O., 1921-
From: Indiana University Press 1978
Author: Mink, Louis O., 1921-
From: Indiana University Press 1978
Keywords:
 
Joyce-Again’s Wake: An Analysis of Finnegans Wake
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-idx?id=JoyceColl.BenstkBJoyceAgntype=header&issueid=JoyceColl.BenstkBJoyceAgn
“It is hoped that Joyce-again’s Wake will be many things to many people, but most important that it will serve the increasing number of ‘middle-range’ readers (those with enough patience to be willing to participate in the work necessary for an understanding of Joyce’s masterpiece, but without that ideal insomnia being simulated by Joycean scholars). As such this ‘analysis’ hopes to bridge the specialized and vital work being done by Joyceans and the boundless country of Joyce’s Wake.”
Contains: Content Analysis
Author: Benstock, Bernard
From: University of Washington Press 1965
Author: Benstock, Bernard
From: University of Washington Press 1965
Keywords:
 
A Lexicon of the German in Finnegans Wake
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/cgi-bin/JoyceColl/JoyceColl-idx?id=JoyceColl.BonheimLexicontype=header&issueid=JoyceColl.BonheimLexicon
“James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is in some senses a remarkable example of group effort: a great many people helped Joyce gather material for it over a period of seventeen years; and even a rudimentary reading of a page is best performed by a committee of scholars. Unfortunately no scholar can be expected to come to this epic work with a knowledge of the score or so of languages which Joyce used in writing it. My list of German words in Joyce’s book seeks to supply non-German readers with a modest but indispensable’ aid which, though dull and unconvincing by itself, when used in conjunction with Finnegans Wake will help penetrate the obscurities of that encyclopedic work. The reader will find that a knowledge of German adds immeasurably to his reading of the work; and it is my hope that similar lists can be prepared for the other main languages drawn upon by Joyce.”
Author: Bonheim, Helmut, 1930-
From: University of California Press 1967
Author: Bonheim, Helmut, 1930-
From: University of California Press 1967
Keywords:
 

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Last Updated Apr 29, 2013