Finnegans Wake is a novel by Irish writer James Joyce. It is known for its experimental style and its reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the Western canon. Written over a period of seventeen years and published in 1939, the novel was Joyce's final work. It is written in a largely idiosyncratic language that blends standard English with neologisms, portmanteau words, Irish mannerisms, and puns in multiple languages. It has been categorized as "a work of fiction which combines a body of fables [...] with the work of analysis and deconstruction"; many critics believe the technique was Joyce's attempt to recreate the experience of dreams and hypnagogia, reproducing the way in which concepts, memories, people, and places become amalgamated in dreaming. It has also been regarded as an attempt by Joyce to combine many of his prior aesthetic ideas, with references to other works and outside ideas woven into the text. Although critics have described it as unintelligible, Joyce asserted that every syllable could 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.
Finnegans Wake
Fountain in Dublin representing Anna Livia Plurabelle, a character in Finnegans Wake
The Franciscan Church of the Immaculate Conception in Dublin, popularly known as Adam & Eve's, referred to in the opening of Finnegans Wake
Jürgen Partenheimer's "Violer d'amores", a series of drawings inspired by Joyce's Finnegans Wake
Irish literature is literature written in the Irish, Latin, English and Scots languages on the island of Ireland. The earliest recorded Irish writing dates from back in the 7th century and was produced by monks writing in both Latin and Early Irish, including religious texts, poetry and mythological tales. There is a large surviving body of Irish mythological writing, including tales such as The Táin and Mad King Sweeny.
Several notable Irish Writers. Clockwise from top left: Jonathan Swift; W. B. Yeats; Oscar Wilde; James Joyce; Colm Toibín; Seamus Heaney; Samuel Beckett; G.B. Shaw
Irish writing from the 8th century
Navan Fort: identified as the ancient Emain Macha, setting of many tales in the Ulster cycle
James Joyce