The Books at the Wake: A Study of Literary Allusions in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake

by James S. Atherton

In Finnegans Wake Joyce uses world lit­erature, great and small, sacred and pro­fane, as one of the most important and frequent of his sources. Setting out to ex­plore these literary allusions, Mr. Atherton sheds a great deal of light upon other as­pects of Joyce’s work. Entire chapters are devoted to such major figures as Swift and Lewis Carroll, while less important influences are grouped together under such headings as “The Irish Writers” and “The Fathers of the Church.” He also sur­veys the various interpretations of Finnegans Wake, and makes use of the Letters of James Joyce and the manuscript of Fin­negans Wake in the British Museum.

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Literature, Criticism, 20th Century

308 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1960

Reviews

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing study--very, very helpful for reading the Wake.

[Howard Krosnick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very detailed and very useful to a reader of the Wake

[Josh Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is, more or less, an attempt at an annotated bibliography of sources used by Joyce for Finnegans Wake. It makes some headway in explaining what books are invoked, and how they are invoked (generally by title or quotation, usually obscured behind misspellings or portmanteau-ideation or both). What doesn't really happen here, though, is anything like a robust account of the purpose(s) for which Joyce references all these books. Maybe that's asking too much- there are several understandable moments when Atherton throws up his hands and says basically "I'm not sure what that means in Chinese" or "I don't know why Joyce put this here." Those moments are very human and understandable - my issue is more that no sense of the whole is even attempted. So at the end of the day, what I learned from this book is something I basically already knew: Finnegans Wake has many obscure allusions which have often obscure purposes. I only know a little more about which books are involved, but that's not super-helpful in the long run. Admittedly, I'm not sure what would be!

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a superb resource for anyone who wants a handy resource to fall back on while reading, studying, or recovering from 'Finnegans Wake'. Not a definitive study, though I doubt there will ever be anything definitive about Joyce's maddening novel anyway. And probably not a book simply read and expect to fully comprehend. I expect I will return to this multiple times as I pursue my goal of at least a limited reading-understanding of 'Finnegans Wake'.