Finnegans Wake

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Lore & Background

Finnegans Wake was published in instalments starting in 1924 under the title 'fragments from Work in Progress'. The final title was revealed only when the book was published on 4 May 1939. Some commentators believe Joyce's technique of combining and altering words from many languages was his attempt to reproduce the way that memories, people, and places are mixed together and transformed in a dreaming or half-awakened state. The initial reception 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. The earliest reference to what would become Finnegans Wake came on 10 March 1923, when Joyce wrote to his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver: 'Yesterday I wrote two pages—the first I have since the final Yes of Ulysses.' Those two pages consisted of the short sketch 'Roderick O'Conor'. Joyce completed four more short sketches in July and August 1923 while holidaying in Bognor: 'Tristan and Isolde', 'Saint Patrick and the Druid', 'Kevin's Orisons', and 'Mamalujo'. The first signs of the book's protagonist HCE came in August 1923 with the sketch 'Here Comes Everybody'. By 1926, Joyce had largely completed both Parts I and III. In the same year, he met Maria and Eugène Jolas in Paris, who gave him valuable encouragement and material support, publishing sections in their literary magazine transition under the title Work in Progress. By this time, early supporters like Ezra Pound and Joyce's brother Stanislaus had grown unsympathetic. In 1929, a group of Joyce's supporters—including Samuel Beckett and William Carlos Williams—published a collection of critical essays titled Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress to create a more favourable critical climate. In July 1929, increasingly demoralised, Joyce approached his friend James Stephens about possibly completing the book, but in the end Joyce finished it himself. In the 1930s, Joyce's progress slowed due to the death of his father John Stanislaus Joyce in 1931, concern over his daughter Lucia's mental health, and his own failing eyesight. Joyce died twenty months after publication, on 13 January 1941 in Zürich.

Reader's Guide

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. The book consists of seventeen chapters, divided into four Parts or Books: Part I has eight chapters, Parts II and III each have four, and Part IV has one short chapter. The standard critical practice is to indicate part number in Roman numerals and chapter title in Arabic numerals (e.g., III.2). Joyce scholars question the legitimacy of searching for a linear storyline. As Bernard Benstock highlights, 'in a work where every sentence opens a variety of possible interpretations, any synopsis of a chapter is bound to be incomplete.' David Hayman has suggested that 'for all the efforts made by critics to establish a plot for the Wake, it makes little sense to force this prose into a narrative mold.' Joyce himself acknowledged this radically different approach in a 1926 letter to Harriet Weaver, outlining his intentions: 'One great part of every human existence is passed in a state which cannot be rendered sensible by the use of wideawake language, cutanddry grammar and goahead plot.' Critics have seen a precedent for the book's plot presentation in Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, with Thomas Keymer stating that 'Tristram Shandy was a natural touchstone for James Joyce as he explained his attempt to build many planes of narrative with a single esthetic purpose in Finnegans Wake.' Despite the revolutionary techniques, Joyce repeatedly emphasized the book was neither random nor meaningless, with Richard Ellmann quoting the author as having stated: 'I can justify every line of my book.'

Did You Know?

• The earliest reference to what would become Finnegans Wake was a letter from Joyce to his patron Harriet Shaw Weaver on 10 March 1923, saying he had written two pages—the first since the final 'Yes' of Ulysses.
• Joyce approached his friend James Stephens in July 1929 about possibly completing the book, choosing him on superstitious grounds because Stephens was born on the same day as Joyce: 2 February 1882.
• A group of Joyce's supporters—including Samuel Beckett and William Carlos Williams—published a collection of critical essays in 1929 titled Our Exagmination Round His Factification for Incamination of Work in Progress to counter negative reactions.
• The book was published in instalments starting in 1924 under the title 'fragments from Work in Progress'; the final title was revealed only on 4 May 1939.
• Joyce's progress slowed in the 1930s due to the death of his father John Stanislaus Joyce in 1931, concern over his daughter Lucia's mental health, and his own failing eyesight.