This conceptualisation of the Wake as a dream is a point of contention for some. Harry Burrell, representative of this view, argues that «one of the most overworked ideas is that Finnegans Wake is about a dream. It is not, and there is no dreamer.» Burrell argues that the theory is an easy way out for «critics stymied by the difficulty of comprehending the novel and the search for some kind of understanding of it.»
Harriet Weaver was among the first to suggest that the dream was not that of any one dreamer, but was rather an analysis of the process of dreaming itself. In a letter to James S. Atherton she wrote:
In particular their ascription of the whole thing to a dream of HCE seems to me nonsensical. My view is that Mr. Joyce did not intend the book to be looked upon as the dream of any one character, but that he regarded the dream form with its shiftings and changes and chances as a convenient device, allowing the freest scope to introduce any material he wished—and suited to a night-piece.
Bernard Benstock also argued that «The Dreamer in the Wake is more than just a single individual, even if one assumes that on the literal level we are viewing the dream of publican H. C. Earwicker.»
Other critics have been more skeptical of the concept of identifying the dreamer of the book’s narrative. Clive Hart argues that «whatever our conclusions about the identity of the dreamer, and no matter how many varied caricatures of him we may find projected into the dream, it is clear that he must always be considered as essentially external to the book, and should be left there. Speculation about the ‘real person’ behind the guises of the dream-surrogates or about the function of the dream in relation to the unresolved stresses of this hypothetical mind is fruitless, for the tensions and psychological problems in Finnegans Wake concern the dream-figures living within the book itself.»
Allusions
Finnegans Wake incorporates a high number of intertextual allusions and references to other texts; Parrinder refers to it as «a remarkable example of intertextuality» containing a «wealth of literary reference.» Among the most prominent are the Irish ballad «Finnegan’s Wake» from which the book takes its name, Italian philosopher Giovanni Battista Vico’s La Scienza Nuova, the Egyptian Book of the Dead, the plays of Shakespeare, and religious texts such as the Bible and Qur’an. These allusions, rather than directly quoting or referencing a source, normally enter the text in a contorted fashion, often through humorous plays on words. For example, Hamlet Prince of Denmark becomes «Camelot, prince of dinmurk» and the Epistle to the Hebrews becomes a «farced epistol to the hibruws».
The book begins with one such allusion to Vico’s New Science: «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».
«Commodius vicus» refers to Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), who proposed a theory of cyclical history in his work La Scienza Nuova (The New Science). Vico argued that the world was coming to the end of the last of three ages, these being the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of humans. These ideas recur throughout Finnegans Wake, informing the book’s four-part structure. Vico’s name appears a number of times throughout the Wake, indicating the work’s debt to his theories, such as «The Vico road goes round and round to meet where terms begin». That a reference to Vico’s cyclical theory of history is to be found in the opening sentence which is a continuation of the book’s closing sentence – thus making the work cyclical in itself – creates the relevance of such an allusion.
One of the sources Joyce drew from is the Ancient Egyptian story of Osiris, and the Egyptian Book of the Dead, a collection of spells and invocations. Bishop asserts that «it is impossible to overlook the vital presence of the Book of the Dead in Finnegans Wake, which refers to ancient Egypt in countless tags and allusions.» Joyce uses the Book of the Dead in Finnegans Wake, «because it is a collection of the incantations for the resurrection and rebirth of the dead on the burial». At one of their final meetings, Joyce suggested to Frank Budgen that he write an article about Finnegans Wake, entitling it «James Joyce’s Book of the Dead». Budgen followed Joyce’s advice with his paper «Joyce’s Chapters of Going Forth by Day», highlighting many of the allusions to Egyptian mythology in the book.
The Tristan and Iseult legend – a tragic love triangle between the Irish princess Iseult, the Cornish knight Tristan and his uncle King Mark – is also oft alluded to in the work, particularly in II.4. Fargnoli and Gillespie argue that «various themes and motifs throughout Finnegans Wake, such as the cuckoldry of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (a King Mark figure) and Shaun’s attempts at seducing Issy, relate directly to Tristan and Isolde […] other motifs relating to Earwicker’s loss of authority, such as the forces usurping his parental status, are also based on Tristan and Isolde.»
The book also alludes heavily to Irish mythology, with HCE sometimes corresponding to Fionn mac Cumhaill, Issy and ALP to Gráinne, and Shem/Shaun to Dermot (Diarmaid). Not only Irish mythology, but also notable real-life Irish figures are alluded to throughout the text. For example, HCE is often identified with Charles Stewart Parnell, and Shem’s attack on his father in this way mirrors the attempt of forger Richard Pigott to incriminate Parnell in the Phoenix Park Murders of 1882 by means of false letters. But, given the flexibility of allusion in Finnegans Wake HCE assumes the character of Pigott as well, for just as HCE betrays himself to the cad, Pigott betrayed himself at the inquiry into admitting the forgery by his spelling of the word «hesitancy» as «hesitency»; and this misspelling appears frequently in the Wake.
Finnegans Wake also makes a great number of allusions to religious texts. When HCE is first introduced in chapter I.2, the narrator relates how «in the beginning» he was a «grand old gardener», thus equating him with Adam in the Garden of Eden. Spinks further highlights this allusion by highlighting that like HCE’s unspecified crime in the park, Adam also «commits a crime in a garden».
Hundred-letter words
An extreme example of the Wake’s language are a series of ten one-hundred letter words spread throughout the text (although the tenth in actuality has a hundred and one letters). The first such word occurs on the text’s first page; all ten are presented in the context of their complete sentences, below.
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is retaled early in bed and later on life down through all christian minstrelsy.
And the duppy shot the shutter clup (Perkodhuskurunbarggruauyagokgorlayorgromgremmitghundhurthrumathunaradidillifaititillibumullunukkunun!)
The (klikkaklakkaklaskaklopatzklatschabattacreppycrottygraddaghsemmihsammihnouithappluddyappladdypkonpkot!).
Bladyughfoulmoecklenburgwhurawhorascortastrumpapornanennykocksapastippatappatupperstrippuckputtanach, eh?
Thingcrooklyexineverypasturesixdixlikencehimaroundhersthemaggerbykinkinkankanwithdownmindlookingated.
Wold Forrester Farley who, in deesperation of deispiration at the diasporation of his diesparation, was found of the round of the sound of the lound of the Lukkedoerendunandurraskewdylooshoofermoyportertooryzooysphalnabortansporthaokansakroidverjkapakkapuk.
Bothallchoractorschumminaroundgansumuminarumdrumstrumtruminahumptadumpwaultopoofoolooderamaunstrunup!
For hanigen with hunigen still haunt ahunt to finnd their hinnigen where Pappappapparrassannuaragheallachnatullaghmonganmacmacmacwhackfalltherdebblenonthedubblandaddydoodled and anruly person creeked a jest.
Let us here consider the casus, my dear little cousis (husstenhasstencaffincoffintussemtossemdamandamnacosaghcusaghhobixhatouxpeswchbechoscashlcarcarcaract) of the Ondt and the Gracehoper.
Ullhodturdenweirmudgaardgringnirurdrmolnirfenrirlukkilokkibaugimandodrrerinsurtkrinmgernrackinarockar!
The Canadian media theorist Marshall McLuhan (with Quentin Fiore and Jerome Agel) identified the ten words as «thunders», reproducing them in his own text. For the purposes of his book, McLuhan appropriated the ten words and interpreted them as symbolizing various forms of human technology, which together with other liberal quotations from the Wake form a parallel rhetoric which McLuhan used to discuss technology, warfare, and human society. Marshall’s son Eric McLuhan carried on his father’s interpretation of the thunders, publishing The Role of Thunder in Finnegans Wake, a book expressly devoted to the meaning of the ten words. For Eric McLuhan, the total letter count of the above ten words (1001) intentionally corresponds to the One Thousand and One Nights of Middle Eastern folklore, which buttresses the critical interpretation of the Wake as being a book of the night.
The hundredlettered name again, last word of perfect language. But you could come near it, we do suppose, strong Shaun O’, we foresupposed. How?
Reception
The value of Finnegans Wake as a work of literature has been a point of contention since the time of its appearance, in serial form, in literary reviews of the 1920s. Initial response, to both its serialised and final published forms, was almost universally negative. Even close friends and family were disapproving of Joyce’s seemingly impenetrable text, with Joyce’s brother Stanislaus «rebuking him for writing an incomprehensible night-book», and former friend Oliver Gogarty believing the book to be a joke, pulled by Joyce on the literary community, referring to it as «the most colossal leg pull in literature since Macpherson’s Ossian». When Ezra Pound, a former champion of Joyce’s and admirer of Joyce’s Ulysses, was asked his opinion on the text, he wrote «Nothing so far as I make out, nothing short of divine vision or a new cure for the clap can possibly be worth all the circumambient peripherization.» H. G. Wells, in a personal letter to Joyce, argued that «you have turned your back on common men,
