Finnegans Wake
A novel by James Joyce, published on 4 May 1939 after seventeen years of composition.
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via Wikipedia: Finnegans Wake · see source
The entire work forms a cycle, with the book ending with the sentence fragment "a way a lone a last a loved a long the" and beginning by finishing that sentence.[1] The novel's opening words complete a sentence whose first half appears at the book's conclusion.[2]
Making and release
Joyce wrote the first two pages of what would become Finnegans Wake on 10 March 1923, after a year of not writing prose following Ulysses.[3] These pages consisted of the short sketch "Roderick O'Conor" about the last king of Ireland cleaning up after guests.[4] The first signs of the book's protagonist HCE appeared in August 1923 with the sketch "Here Comes Everybody"[5] By 1926, Joyce had largely completed both Parts I and III.[6]
Joyce met Maria and Eugène Jolas in 1926, who gave him encouragement and published sections in their magazine transition under the title Work in Progress.[6] Joyce's progress slowed considerably in the 1930s due to his father's death, concern for his daughter's mental health, and his own failing eyesight.[7] While staying in Bognor during July and August 1923, Joyce wrote four additional short sketches.[4] After a seventeen-year writing process, Finnegans Wake appeared as a book on 4 May 1939.[8]
What the cited sources add
The Literary Encyclopedia notes that Finnegans Wake is among the most important literary experiments of twentieth-century literature.[2] A collection of quotations from The Brazen Head includes D.H. Lawrence's criticism of "Work in Progress" as "nothing but old fags and cabbage-stumps of quotations from the Bible and the rest, stewed in the juice of deliberate journalistic dirty-mindedness"[9] The same source records Carl Jung's description of Ulysses as "a homunculus of the consciousness of the new world" and his statement that "one could find all the pieces, together with the forces that broke them, in Finnegans Wake".[9]
References
- Wikipedia, "Finnegans Wake" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Joyce, Letters I, p.246; Finnegan is first referred to on p.4, line 18, as "Bygmester Finnegan"; Barger, "The Online shorter Finnegans Wake", Robot Wisdom; Barger, "The Online shorter Finnegans Wake", Robot Wisdom; Joyce 1939, pp. 8–10 , which presents a guided tour through a museum in the Wellington Monument, which commemorates Finnegan's fall, retold as the battle of "Wi; Joyce 1939, pp. 16–18 , which describes a dialogue between respectively deaf and dumb aboriginal ancestors, who have difficulty hearing, seeing and understandin; Herm en.wikipedia.org
- van Hulle, "Finnegans Wake", The Literary Encyclopedia. facts only, no text reused. litencyc.com
- Wikipedia, "Finnegans Wake" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bulson, E. J., The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 14. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Finnegans Wake" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: The piece would eventually become the conclusion of Part II Chapter 3 (FW: 380.07–382.30); cf Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 5. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Finnegans Wake" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Crispi, Slote 2007, pp. 12–13. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Finnegans Wake" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Lernout, in Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 50; Lernout, in Crispi, Slote 2007, p. 50; Crispi, Slote 2007, p.22 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Finnegans Wake" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Bulson, E. J., The Cambridge Introduction to James Joyce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), p. 15.; Eide, M., Ethical Joyce (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), p. 110.; Bristow, D., Joyce and Lacan: Reading, Writing and Psychoanalysis (Abingdon-on-Thames: Routledge, 2017), p. 129. (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- Wikipedia, "Finnegans Wake" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Richard Ellmann, "James Joyce", Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 740 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
- "Joyce – Quotations", The Brazen Head. facts only, no text reused. shipwrecklibrary.com
Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Finnegans Wake (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.
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Sources
Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.
- Wikipedia: Finnegans Wake (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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