Talk:Finnegans Wake

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Good articleFinnegans Wake has been listed as one of the Language and literature good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Article milestones
DateProcessResult
February 9, 2009Good article nomineeListed

Thunders[edit]

I've never even read "Finnegans Wake", and yet I'm surprised that this article doesn't mention the "ten thunders" at all. For example, Marshall McLuhan thought they were pretty important, and so does his son Eric. — Scott talk 19:49, 9 April 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This is as good a place as any to describe a recent edit. I've added an edit along the above lines, and I intend to improve it soon. I particularly encourage proof-reading of the hundred-lettered words per the above. -MinnesotanUser — Preceding unsigned comment added by MinnesotanUser (talkcontribs) 09:25, 23 August 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Vico || Tom Finnegan[edit]

"Tim Finnegan, born "with a love for the liquor", falls from a ladder, breaks his skull, and is thought to be dead."

de:WP Vico falls from a ladder, breaks his skull and remained unconscious for hours.

de:WP"In seiner Autobiographie schrieb Vico, dass er im Alter von sieben Jahren von einer Leiter gefallen sei, sich einen Schädelbruch zugezogen habe und fünf Stunden lang bewusstlos gewesen sei."--91.34.206.127 (talk) 09:27, 21 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

multilingual puns[edit]

Even these are a red herring, really. It's important to bear in mind that it is an Irish novel written in English. ""Joyce's method became one of "increasingly obsessional concern with note-taking, since [he] obviously felt that any word he wrote had first to have been recorded in some notebook." As Joyce continued to incorporate these notes into his work, the text became increasingly dense and obscure."" Another way of saying this is that Joyce did a huge amount of SHOE-HORNING, and this is how the wake reads. I read it in 1985, then I spent 30 years learning 9 or 10 European languages (well enough to read Proust twice in the original, for example). I've just re-read the first 150 pages of the wake. My reception of it is no different from 30 years ago. The interesting thing about the obscurity is that it is possible to read things in it that Joyce didn't intend but welcomed anyway. So if you look up mishe-mishe in Finneganswiki you'll see lots of possibilities, but no guarantee that Joyce was aware of half of them. And in fact, mishe mishe is always paired with teufteuf - French for choochoo train, at least I've noted it on pages 3, 145, 203, 225, 240, 249, 277, 290, 291. Finneganswiki doesn't seem to have cottoned on to this coupling). At the end of Watt, Samuel Beckett ambiguously writes "no symbols where none intended". In the case of FW, "no puns where none intended" would not be true! Dreams? See p.293 - "the death he has lived through becomes the life he is to die into". I think that expresses it better. The repeated cultural references may well all stem from Jung. It's easier to criticise the Wake if, as I do, you think Ulysses is a curate's egg. I think it's also important to realise that perhaps the Wake is becoming old-fashioned. I first became interested in Joyce 40 years ago, when the Wake was about 40 years old. It has doubled its age since then! And Joyce's Ireland is the Ireland of Queen Victoria, or Edward VII, if you are precise about Joyce leaving it behind in 1904 (and dreaming about it for, coincidentally, nearly 40 years).

He would ask friends for lists of words in languages they knew and then stick them in randomly. QuentinUK (talk) 11:20, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

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Multilingual versions[edit]

Reference to where the Chinese version is abridged? It's not yet **complete** as only Part 1 is published (and annotated like mad), but the assertion that Dai's translation is abridged seems unfounded. L talk 10:10, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Aphra 10:53, 6 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Alainna First, I apologise if this should have been written swhere else; I am new to Wiki ways and templates. Re Joyce: I would say that translations of parts/excerpts/fragments/chapters of 'Finnegans Wake' should *not* be mentioned in the entry. For two reasons. (1) A fragment of 'FW' is not 'FW'. (2) There are dozens and dozens of such attempts in lots of languages. (Why distinguish Dai Cong Rong's work then?) Btw I take 'unabridged/abridged' to be synonymous to 'complete/partial'. Cheers. [User:Wikibidd] — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikibidd (talkcontribs) 10:53, 6 February 2017 (UTC)[reply]

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Partial translations?[edit]

Should we allow partial translations? Compare this entry by Tosk Albanian with this one by Wikibidd.

I don't think we should include partial translations. What is the cutoff for size? How important are they? Kablammo (talk) 15:10, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Previous edit was surely inadequate in not indicating Dai Congrong's (ongoing) Chinese translation as partial. I would suggest an exception should be made; this is a significant work, the first volume of an intended full-text translation, and not partial as in abridged or excerpted; the very substantial attention it has received in China and internationally leave this section otherwise rather incomplete. Tosk Albanian (talk) 15:21, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I would have no objection to mentioning an ongoing, active project translating the entire work. Kablammo (talk) 23:48, 1 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
I would restore Turkish as the end of the sentence and add a new sentence that the first volume of what is expected to be a multi-volume translation into Mandarin (Chinese, if you prefer) sold out its first print run within a month and reportedly was surpassed in sales only by a biography of one-time leader Deng Xiaoping. This sounds like the start of a monumental work in progress, if you'll excuse the pun, not just a translation. (775 pages for just the first volume!) — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 01:24, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If exception is made for the Chinese FW in progress, then, for consistency's sake, dozens of other attempts should be allowed for as well. [Why not Russian? Catalan? Italian? Hungarian? Another Japanese? Several in German?] Btw, the "first print" report, as it comes from the Graniaud, amounts to 8.000 copies, which is hardly an impressive number given the population of China. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikibidd (talkcontribs) 11:45, 2 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
If there are other on-going efforts to translate FW that are note-worthy, I think they should be included as well. Partial translations, in my opinion, should not be added. As far as how many books were involved, I don't know the typical size of a first printing in China of a translation of a 75-year-old foreign work that has international notoriety for being "difficult"—do you? That's why I rely on reliable sources like the London Review of Books instead of guessing. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 03:45, 3 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Norwegian influence?[edit]

The article mentions the "Norwegian influence", that is, the allusions Finnegans Wake makes to Norway and its language. While this seems to be true (as I don't speak Norwegian, these allusions are among the ones I miss), Norwegian is not the only language the books frequently alludes to. It is rife with Dutch, German, French, Latin, Irish, Spanish and other puns, and as a Ducthman I don't miss references to Dutch topography either. So why include a separate section specifically about Norwegian influence? Steinbach (talk) 10:48, 12 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]

James Joyce learnt Norwegian so that he could read the works of Henrik Ibsen in the original. He knew a few other languages, he did not really know more about the world's languages than that, but he knew smatterings of many other languages. Vorbee (talk) 18:47, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]
But Verbee, Ibsen wrote his plays in Dutch.Forthooster (talk) 07:44, 1 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]
He wrote in Danish. But your point stands. 14:14, 24 July 2022 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cross Reference (talkcontribs)

Comic sourced[edit]

I studied Finnegan's Wake with the Wake specialist, Edmund Epstein and never did he describe the book as a comic fiction. Is comic sourced? If not I would remove it. Finnegan's Wake may have funny parts but its far from comic.(Littleolive oil (talk) 23:10, 3 April 2018 (UTC))[reply]

See Talk:Finnegans_Wake/Archive_3#Opening_sentence. The lede once said it was "comic prose", and was sourced. See [1], and Conley, p. 107. That was later removed and I see that I am the one who added it back, changing it to "comic fiction",[2] but without the cite. Certainly Joyce thought it was comic; he was heard to laugh out loud when he was writing it. I don't see it can really be called a novel. See Conley, p. 109. Kablammo (talk) 02:41, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Some Google gleanings:
Perhaps our lede could mention the blend of comic and poetic. Kablammo (talk) 11:42, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I could see saying the book is an avant-garde, fictional narrative or novel with comic and romantic elements... something like that?(Littleolive oil (talk) 23:50, 6 April 2018 (UTC))[reply]
I adapted it; feel free to edit it. Kablammo (talk) 00:00, 7 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good.(Littleolive oil (talk) 00:03, 7 April 2018 (UTC))[reply]

External links[edit]

There has been deletion, reinstatement, and now some deletion (by me) of many external links. Can we discuss what external links are needed here, in light of wikipedia policies? I've expresses some opinions in my recent edit summaries. Kablammo (talk) 23:15, 6 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In general the less the better. They need to add something that the article does not have or that can not be easily presented in the article. A well developed article (which this is) should not have many links at all as the information a reader needs will be found in the article. I am happy to go through each individually if you want. Each link should be justified in some way. @Jack Greenmaven: I have no problem with being reverted, but an edit summary would be nice as to why. FWIW I was just responding to the tag that had been there since 2014 and have had no other personal interest in the article. AIRcorn (talk) 00:35, 7 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I removed the link to James Joyce reading a portion of "Anna Livia Plurabelle", because I uploaded a version of that file from the Internet Archive to Commons last month. There's no need to have links to two different versions of the same audio file. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 02:04, 7 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I removed a couple of links; I could remove more I guess. I did cite RS but external links may not need be a RS. Blogs are probably not a good idea even for external links especially with something as obtuse as Finnegan's Wake can be where oversight for accuracy might be a best idea.(Littleolive oil (talk) 16:44, 30 April 2018 (UTC))[reply]

Is FW translatable into other languages?[edit]

Is FW translatable into other languages? Has it been attempted?

- see Finnegans Wake#Translations and derivative works - Epinoia (talk) 14:23, 4 May 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Term quark[edit]

This article says the term "quark" originates from Finnegans Wake. Should it also say that the word "quark" should be pronounced to rhyme with "sharK"? Vorbee (talk) 18:33, 23 July 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Sentence complexity[edit]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Updated significantly and a bot undid it[edit]

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)[reply]

The default intro for a long time has major impediments[edit]

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)[reply]

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." (Finnegans Wake, 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)[reply]

Irony[edit]

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)[reply]