Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake: Unravelling Universals
Finn Fordham
Language: English
Pages: 280
ISBN: 0199673578
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
This book is a critical introduction to Finnegans Wake and its genesis. As well as offering a survey of critical, scholarly and theoretical approaches to Joyce's masterpiece, it analyses in detail the compositional development of certain key passages which describe the artist (Shem) and his project; the river-mother (ALP) and her 'first kiss'; the Oedipal shooting of the universal father (HCE) by the priestly son (Shaun); and the bewitching and curious daughter (Issy). The analyses demonstrate 'genetic' ways of reading the text which illustrate its immense range and playfulness and how these qualities were generated in composition.
As well as opening up the densely detailed textuality of the Wake in all its multiplicity, Fordham argues for a relation between the way the text was formed and key aspects of its thematic content: an uprising of particularity and detail against universality, absolutes and generality. The proliferation of individuated textual details overwhelm any unitary concept to the text. And this reflects an idealised and utopian uprising as it overcomes centralising singularity: Finnegans do wake up. As part of this argument a qualified return to a notion of character is proposed. But it is qualified in that characters can be understood in part as reflecting the character of compositional techniques: self-criticism and concealment, expansion and growth, flow and reflection, transferral and transformation. The character of the text's composition as a whole can be, paradoxically, summed up in the force of individuated multitudes: in the people, both male and female, young and old, combining to overwhelm syntactic uniformity and singular signification.
Would be difficult to match them all to the Wake. One problem here, as long as cultural studies are synonymous with the study of popular culture, is the perceived elitism of Finnegans Wake. It may be a ‘funferall’ and, as Harry Levin quoted optimistically in 1939, there may be ‘something for everyone’, but that does not mean that all of it is for everyone—or even anyone. Instead of pleasing all of the people some of the time, it has proved better at pleasing ²⁶ Wim van Mierlo, ‘Finnegans Wake and.
Line somewhere. Joyce’s processes of rewriting are so intensive, and the close reading so fruitful, that each level adds a new set of considerations. Going back to the sub-zero level of the notes creates a set of questions (What’s the source? Where else is that ⁴³ LIII, 193 n. 8. ⁴⁴ See The ‘Finnegans Wake’ Notebooks at Buffalo, ed. Vincent Deane, Daniel Ferrer, and Geert Lernout ( Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001– ). 28 Introduction source used? How is it transformed in draft usage? What.
In Book IV, as mythic depth and cosmic breadth are layered over the work. Oga is an ogre, an evil giant but also a river, and it means ‘bath’ in Kiswahili: he is the slayer of the sinuous river, especially insofar as the river snakes. This turns out to be a theme in the book: the control of ³⁶ 47476a–267; JJA 49: 553. ³⁷ See Aida Yaved ‘Joyce’s Sources: Sir Richard F. Burton’s Terminal Essay in Finnegans Wake’, in Joyce Studies Annual (2000): 124–66. See below, p. 101. 86 Part I water as part.
Of other ¹⁷ 47480–7v; JJA 55: 14. ‘I Shuttm!’ 101 words, pushing them out of their customary situation. This pathological term proves to be more suitable than the polite domestic associations of Carroll’s notion of the ‘portmanteau’. If HCE is being represented by a misspelled ambulance, despite being linguistically battered, he is carrying or destined to carry the wounded. Butt’s attack, then, is cruel, breaking conventions of war that would respect, for instance, the work of the Red Cross.
Corpse admired by the mourners. During this funeral, stories are told about how he fell from grace spying on two girls, himself spied on by three soldiers, but also how he managed to domesticate a mischievous and independent woman. Suddenly he wakes: but the mourners would prefer him out of their hair, so they ease him back into the sleep of death, reassuring him that someone respectable has taken his place. Chapters I.2– I.4 comprise a unit of sorts in that they concern various stories, rumours,.