Talk:Finnegans Wake

Sentence complexity
I had to click on 4 of the linked articles to be able to understand the following sentence:

"The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, which blends standard English lexical items and neologistic multilingual puns and portmanteau words to unique effect"

And I still don't really understand what it's trying to tell me within the context of the novel. It's an impressive sounding statement but can someone please simplify it for those of us who aren't language majors? I think there might even be a wiki rule about simplicity if I'm not mistaken. I'm going to continue reading the article but this was really a put-off of an introduction.


 * It's an absolutely clear, readable, logical sentence that is eminently understandable, and explains a complex idea in relatively simple, easy-to-grasp terms. And I'm not a language major! (I'd maybe replace the first "and" in the sentence with a comma, though.)  24.251.5.213 (talk) 21:59, 16 July 2022 (UTC)

It shouldn’t even need to be said that not everybody is going to understand a sentence using words like “neologistic” and “idiosyncratic” and “portmanteau”. Also, “standard English lexical items” is a hell of a synonym for “word”. Of course people should be able to understand the page, that is the point of an encyclopedia article, to inform general interest. Anyway, I tried to revise it but the edits got reverted. Gonna post about this and leave it at that. Julkhamil (talk) 21:54, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

Updated significantly and a bot undid it
I just really cleaned up the page and some Wikipedia bot flagged it and deleted it. Just felt like commenting on this. 2A02:3034:10:3A04:FC1D:6214:CB75:FDA0 (talk) 19:55, 22 December 2022 (UTC)

The default intro for a long time has major impediments
The below has been the default intro for a long time. It was fine as a fill-in for lack of anybody making it better, but I just seriously revised it and the edit got reverted. It is not so good that it needs to be preserved. It is a very slipshod piece of writing with some pretty vague and random sounding sentences:

“Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is well known for its experimental style and reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon.[1]

“It is well known for its experimental style” - maybe it is, but that’s not a very definite assertion. What does it mean for something to be “well known”? Known by how many people? And what evidence is there that it is “well-known” in this way?

“One of the most difficult works in the Western cabin.”

- maybe it is a difficult book, but why, and in what way? Also, the concept of a “western canon” is not integral to a discussion of Finnegans wake - it is a separate topic which could be mentioned in the article, but not as the forefront giving context to the entire topic. Finnegans wake doesn’t have to be thought about in relevance to a “Western canon”.

It has been called "a work of fiction which combines a body of fables ... with the work of analysis and deconstruction".[2]

- I’m sorry but this is one of the worst sentences I was trying to get rid of. It isn’t informative at all. If you were new to FW, what would this mean to you? It “combines fables with the work of deconstruction”. I think they are trying to say that the book invites analysis due to how much information there is embedded into each page, but this is not a clear way to say that. “Deconstruction” is not the most general introductory thing somebody show hear or know about FW. It sounds like a pretty mangled, corrupted quote from some article that never really got cleaned up. I tried to do that, but my edit got reverted.

Written in Paris over a period of seventeen years and published in 1939, Finnegans Wake was Joyce's final work.

“The entire book is written in a largely idiosyncratic language, which blends standard English words with neologistic portmanteau words, Irish mannerisms and puns in multiple languages to unique effect.”

- as someone else pointed out, there is a lot of verbiage here. It could be written way smoother, cleaner and clearer. “To unique effect” is pretty vague and doesn’t add that much to the reader’s understanding of the book.

Many critics believe the technique was Joyce's attempt to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams,[3] reproducing the way concepts, people and places become amalgamated in dreaming.

“It is an attempt by Joyce to combine many of his aesthetic ideas, with references to other works and outside ideas woven into the text; “

- this is another really bad line I was trying to get rid of. It almost makes no sense and is really strangely vague. What is FW? Oh, it’s a book where this writer tried to combine their aesthetic ideas. Oh, ok. Interesting. (Not.)

Joyce declared that "Every syllable can be justified". Due to its linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and abandonment of narrative conventions, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public.[4][5]”

The fact that this has persisted as the final line for so long it starting to really bug me. It feels like there’s someone who doesn’t like FW who keeps insisting the article conclude on the note that basically nobody likes the book (which comes after a diatribe about how it’s the world’s most freakishly complicated and experimental book). There are many people who see Joyce as imaginative, comedic and playful. The tone of the entire intro is not neutral, descriptive or informative.

My edit was by no means perfect and more work needs to be done in it, but I really hope more people can support trying to stabilize the edit until anybody wants to contribute something better. This old version has had its time, and its time is over. It is very poor, the caricature of why Wikipedia articles can sometimes be surprisingly poor-quality in spite of the positive reputation the website has. Julkhamil (talk) 22:07, 22 December 2022 (UTC)


 * After my explanation above of some issue with the current intro paragraph, I show a revised version here. I fully admit it is not perfect either. I myself will write in what work I think needs to be done on it. But I will also show it resolves some of the issues above. I also think since I made a couple of edits parts of my revisions may not all be in one place, but it's ok, the below is more of a demonstration than anything, showing the advantages and my own critiques of it.
 * Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce, known for its experimental style and reputation as a difficult work to read.
 * I overall find this acceptably neutral and trying to relay the core ideas of general interest. It could of course be even more neutral and objective. It is a novel. It is by James Joyce. Joyce is Irish, and he is a writer. It is approximately 400 pages long and some number of words long. It is objectively true that the book has many words that do not occur elsewhere, because Joyce created them.
 * Honestly, after that what you decide to say becomes more open-ended, but hopefully we can still agree on a few things.
 * 1. The need to brand the book as "experimental" and "hard to read" are of course tolerable and understandable. Ideally, though, we might consider that that's not really a neutral, or particularly objective, statement. What would be much better would be to say that many people who read the book when it first appeared found it more or less impossible to understand, and found it off-putting for its "experimentalism", or departure from norms of writing at the time. This is better because if more people decide to write books largely in portmanteaus, the style does not have to be considered "experimental". In a different context, it could become normal or mainstream. It's more of a personal conviction or cultural attitude to say a particular art form is "experimental". This term not only conveys that it deviates greatly from a status quo, norm, or common form, but it also subtly hints to me that the point is more to explore new artistic terrain than necessarily be a "good book", in the conventional sense. Again, that is very debatable. We should not imply such a thing in an encyclopedia article without the point being very, very well-buttressed. Supports of the book including Joyce considered it a "good book" in that conventional sense. They found it worthy of real, organic enthusiasm and commendation. Similarly, the idea that it is difficult to read is technically not intrinsic to the book. It could become easy to read under different circumstances. If people learned from a young age the language of the wake, it could be the easiest book to read in that culture, whereas novels by Jane Austen could be very hard. This is not a truly intrinsic feature of the book, although of course, it is understandable to want to say it, but it could be said, again, more objectively: "because the book is written in originally constructed words, to understand its content, it requires you to study the multiple meanings of most of the words." This is way more indisputable and lacking in attitude: is that hard, boring, repellant, fun, rewarding? It doesn't matter what your attitude towards that fact is. We just need the indisputable fact, not dressed up in any one particular person's attitude towards it.
 * The novel is written in a largely idiosyncratic language that blends standard English words with neologistic portmanteau words, Irish mannerisms, and puns in multiple languages, as evident in the following quote from the novel: "The pranks and japery, ramsquaddling, mumpsimums and chaff that were in all their fool mouths this while to set on foot, they could but break wind and bellow balderdash." (, page 4) Literary critic Edmund Wilson described the novel as "a maze of puns and portmanteaus, of multiple languages and echoes, of overlapping stories, of themes and symbols that are constantly recurring and constantly shifting." (Edmund Wilson, "The Dream of H.C. Earwicker" in The Shock of Recognition)
 * This is not perfect in terms of style or accuracy, but it is not a bad idea to have at least one quote in the beginning to quickly help people ascertain what the book itself is really like, instead of kind of obscure quotes from secondary literature. It is more pure and direct, again. It would be better to relegate other people's opinion to a section on "secondary viewpoints", and try to keep the intro really just drawing from and about the book itself, as much as the book can simply represent itself on its own terms.
 * Finnegans Wake is often referred to as a "book of the night" and an "encyclopedic novel" due to its evocation of the world of dreams and its wide-ranging allusions and references to various works and ideas.
 * This is certainly more subjective, but it is not a bad beginning place. If we are going to try to help the reader understand more subjectively, what is the "significance" of this thing? Not "importance", but literally, "cultural meaning", what do people think about it, what does it "mean", in a way? It is not a bad thing to include this, and not just objective information about, i.e. how many pages it has or when it was published. But we should try to do so more systematically. Perhaps there are many different perspectives on what the book is like. Why don't we find a way to give a balanced overview of them all? A first paragraph about what the book is actually about. A second on how people feel about it. So, the first, for example: "It has been stated that... "1. its about world history and mythology, Irish drinking culture, and a story about an Irish family. 2. it has a distinctive way it was written (cyclical, portmanteau, multilingual). 3. maybe themes: it is comedic, naturalistic/pastoral, and erudite in tone, including a moving passage about familial love (the ending, the ALP monologue). The second section, peoples opinions: "this person said it was bad, this person said it was good, etc." a concise survey of different viewpoints.
 * That could be a way more balanced version of the intro. Julkhamil (talk) 12:17, 27 December 2022 (UTC)

Irony
Finnegans Wake has come up a couple of times in some research I'm doing on irony. Wayne Booth dubs it "The Encyclopedia of All Ironic Wisdom" at p.212 of A Rhetoric of Irony. Northrop Frye calls it "the chief ironic epic of our time" at p.323 of his Anatomy of Criticism. I popped over here to see if there was an appropriate place to incorporate one or both of these references (I'm not a fan of decontextualized critical pronouncements, even when the author is famous). To my surprise, a search on the term "irony" brings up only one hit, and it's in the bibliography (so there is at least one actual Joyce scholar who thinks this is important enough to include in a monograph subtitle).

My knowledge of the secondary literature is mostly limited to weekly reading assignments given over a one-semester seminar during which we also read the entire book (!). I don't remember any of it being expressly on irony. Does this feature of FW seem to others like it deserves a paragraph somewhere? Any article-length reading suggestions?

Cheers, Patrick J. Welsh (talk) 19:22, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

section repetition? too hung up on the dream interpretation?
Two point post:

1) Shouldn't "Critical response and themes" be merged with "Literary significance and criticism"? Or what is the justification for separating these sections?

2) Also, "A reconstruction of nocturnal life" seems too long. My response here is surely colored by my incredulity towards readings of the Wake that present it as someone's dream—in any even remotely literal sense. Wherever one falls on that, however, I don't think readers of Wikipedia benefit from this report on the positions of so many critics.

I think I could fix (2) pretty easily, but I'd need to look more carefully at the relevant sections for (1). I might not be the best person for the job.

I'll leave this up for at least a few days, though, so that others have a chance to weigh in.

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 01:04, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

A simplified lead
The current lead contains words that will be unfamiliar to many readers, as well as a great deal of unnecessary detail. I've drafted a simplified version in better accordance with WP:LEAD.

For those who have not read the policy, the lead is supposed to be a summary of the article in plan language. Nothing not already supported in the article belongs in the lead, and the article is the source for the lead. Also, WP:PEACOCK terms are strongly discouraged, and it is my own editorial position that displacing such superlatives into the mouth of an editor's preferred critic violates this guideline (exception: when the critic or publication is notable enough to be discussed in the body of the article).

The draft:

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 1928, it began to appear in installments under the title "fragments from Work in Progress". The final title remained secret until the book was published on 4 May 1939.

The initial reception of the 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 believe this technique was Joyce's attempt to reproduce the way that memories, people, and places are mixed together and transformed in the half-awake or dreaming 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.

One thing missing is mention of the novel's many themes. This section of the article, however, needs to be expanded and improved before there is anything to add at the top.

Comments, suggestions, criticisms, all most welcome!

Cheers, Patrick (talk) 21:22, 20 July 2024 (UTC)