Joyce's Kaleidoscope

An Invitation to Finnegans Wake
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-19-532103-6
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 332 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 506 g

James Joyce's Ulysses, once regarded as obscure and obscene, is now viewed as one of the masterpieces of world literature. Yet Joyce's final novel, Finnegans Wake, to which he devoted seventeen years, remains virtually unread, except by scholarly specialists. Its linguistic novelties, apparently based on an immense learning that few can share, make it appear impenetrable.

Joyce's Kaleidoscope attempts to dissolve the darkness and to invite lovers of literature to engage with Finnegans Wake. Philip Kitcher proposes that the Wake has at its core an age-old philosophical question, "What makes a life worth living?", and that Joyce explores that question from the perspective of someone who feels that a long life is now ending. So the complex dream language is a way of investigating issues that are hard to face directly; the reader is
invited to struggle with the novel's aging dreamer who seeks reassurance about the worth of what he has done and been. Joyce finds his way to reassurance. The sweeping music and the high comedy of Finnegans Wake celebrate the ordinary doings of ordinary people. With great humanity and a distinctive brand of humanism, Joyce points
us to the things that matter in our lives. His final novel is a festival of life itself.

From this perspective, the supposedly opaque, or nonsensical, language opens up as a rich source for the reader's reflections: though readers won't all approach it the same way, or with the same set of references, there is meaning in it for everyone. Kitcher's detailed study of the entire text brings out its musical resonances and its musical structures. It analyzes the novel overall while bringing deep insight to the reading of key individual passages. This engaging guide will aid readers not
just to make sense of the novel, but to relish the remarkable accomplishment of Joyce's least appreciated work.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kitcher, Philip

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgements
Awakening
1:
So soft this morning, ours
2:
His reignbolt's shot
3:
Respectable
4:
Nayman of Noland
5:
Crossmess parzel
6:
Life's robulous rebus
7:
Three score and ten toptypsical readings
8:
The hubbub caused in Edenborough
9:
The unfacts, did we possess them, are too imprecisely few to warrant our certitude
10:
Everybody heard their plaint
11:
Tell me more
12:
Loud, heap miseries upon us
13:
The tasks above are as the flasks below
14:
From Liff away
15:
The four of us and sure, thank God, there are no more of us
16:
A picture primitive
17:
Lightbreakfastbringer
18:
Arise, sir ghostus!
19:
Male and female, unmask we hem
20:
The keys to. Given!

Über Autor(innen)

Currently John Dewey Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, Philip Kitcher is a former President of the American Philosophical Association (Pacific Division), a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and is also the first recipient of the Prometheus Prize of the American Philosophical Association. His previous books include The Advancement of Science (OUP); The Lives to Come: The Genetic Revolution and Human
Possibilities; Science, Truth, and Democracy (OUP); In Mendel's Mirror; and Finding an Ending: Reflections on Wagner's Ring.