WORDSWORTH CLASSICS : FINNEGANS WAKE – JAMES JOYCE-PROFESSOR LEN PLATT-DR KEITH CARABINE

Finnegans Wake is the book of Here Comes Everybody and Anna Livia Plurabelle and their family – their book, but in a curious way the book of us all as well as all our books. Joyce s last great work, it is not comprised of many borrowed styles, like Ulysses, but, rather, formulated as one dense, tongue-twisting soundscape. This language is based on English vocabulary and syntax but, at the same time, self-consciously designed to function as a pun machine with an astonishing capacity for resisting singularity of meaning. Announcing a revolution of the word , this astonishing book amounts to a powerfully resonant cultural critique – a unique kind of miscommunication which, far from stabilizing the world in meaning, constructs a universe radically unfixed by a wild diversity of possibilities and potentials. It also remains the most hilarious, obscene , book of innuendos ever to be imagined.