Finnegans Wake
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Joyce began working on the book shortly after the 1922 publication of Ulysses, and by 1924 installments of the work began to appear in serialized form. The first published parts were announced as A New Unnamed Work; later instalments were published as fragments from Work in Progress. The actual title of the work remained a secret between Joyce and his wife Nora Barnacle until shortly before the book was published in its entirety.
Finnegans Wake is widely known for the difficult and abstract language in which Joyce chose to write it. Despite being one of the most well-known books of the 20th century, it remains unread by the larger public. Joyce's methods of stream of consciousness, literary allusions and free dream associations are pushed to the limit in Finnegans Wake, which abandons conventions of plot and character construction and which is written in a language based mainly on complex multi-level puns. Although many readers and commentators have reached a broad consensus about the central cast of characters and general story, many details remain elusive.
