Finnegans Wake

Legendary card · No. 2101

Finnegans Wake is a novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. It was published in installments 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. 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 commentators believe this technique was Joyce's 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 of Finnegans 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. Its allusive and experimental style has resulted in it having a reputation as one of the most difficult works in literature...

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