Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake is the title of the final novel of James Joyce, published in 1939. The title is taken, with the careful subtraction of an apostrophe, from the title of a traditional Irish ballad, "Finnegan's Wake," about a man who comes back to life at the sight of the tremendous outlay of whiskey made available to the mourners at his wake. Like many other things, the title is "dublinned", or doubled, with multiple meanings agglomerating around a few central motifs and acronyms that raise themselves above the ocean of portmanteau prose that is the text of the Wake. Among these, the most prominent are Anna Livia Plurabelle, or "ALP," a kind of water- and river-goddess who governs the flow and tide of the narrative, and Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE, also "Here comes everybody", "Haveth childers everywhere", etc.).

The narrative is circular. The first sentence of the book is 'riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs.' It follows on from the last, 'A way a lone a loved a long the'.