According to James Gourley, Joyce’s book features in Plath’s «as an alienating canonical authority».

«Finnegan’s Wake» is a traditional Irish song that has been recorded in more recent years by bands including the Dubliners and Dropkick Murphys. It predates Finnegans Wake and inspired Joyce’s title.

Finnegans Wake provided the name for the quark, one of the elementary particles proposed by physicist Murray Gell-Mann. Specifically Gell-Mann’s coinage derives Joyce’s phrase in which the outdated English word meaning to croak is intoned by a choir of birds mocking King Mark of Cornwall in the legend of Tristan and Iseult.

Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn’t got much of a bark
And sure any he has it’s all beside the mark.