Skip to main content

Finnegans Wake

Sort Name
Finnegans Wake
Type
Novel
Language
English
Ratings
No reviews

Wikipedia

Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is known for its allusive and experimental style and its reputation as one of the most difficult works in literature. In 1924, it began to appear in installments under the title "fragments from Work in Progress". The final title was only revealed when the book was published on 4 May 1939.

The initial reception of Finnegans Wake was largely negative, ranging from bafflement at its radical reworking of language to open hostility towards its seeming pointlessness and lack of respect for literary conventions. Joyce, however, asserted that every syllable was justified.

Although the base language of the novel is English, it is an English that Joyce modified by combining and altering words from many languages into his own distinctive idiom. Some commentators believe this technique was Joyce's attempt to reproduce the way that memories, people, and places are mixed together and transformed in a dreaming or half-awakened state.

Despite the obstacles, readers and commentators have reached a broad consensus about the book's central cast of characters and, to a lesser degree, its plot. The book explores the lives of the Earwicker family, comprising the father HCE; the mother ALP; and, their three children Shem the Penman, Shaun the Postman, and Issy. Following an unspecified rumour about HCE, the book follows his wife's attempts to exonerate him with a letter, his sons' struggle to replace him, and a final monologue by ALP at the break of dawn. Emphasizing its cyclical structure, the novel ends with an unfinished line that completes the fragment with which it began.

Continue reading at Wikipedia... Wikipedia content provided under the terms of the Creative Commons BY-SA license

Annotation

Novel first published on May 4, 1939.

Last modified: 2020-10-03 (revision #28976)

Editions


Add Edition

There are no Editions yet!

Help us complete BookBrainz


Not sure what to do? Visit the help page to get started.

Relationships

Identifiers

LibraryThing Work
11916
MusicBrainz Work ID
5c3a57fb-a5e5-4312-8528-bef532ddf794
OpenLibrary Work ID
OL86319W
Wikidata ID
Q6507

Related Collections

This entity does not appear in any public collection.
Click the "Add to collection" button below to add it to an existing collection or create a new one.

Reviews No reviews

No reviews yet.


Last Modified
2020-10-03