Finnegans Wake exhumes mythologies and theologies of cultures encompassing the whole of human experience. Not the least researched are references and correspondences to classical mythology, but the family of gods in the Greek creation myth offers a unique parallel to Joyce's ever-expansive Wakean family. In doing so, I will use as a guide a scholar of both classical mythology and the institution of family, Giambattista Vico.
In the Greek creation myth (and also in Genesis), an unnammable god divided timeless and formless Chaos--"joepeter's gaseytotum" (FW, 426.21; 'Jupiter's gaseous universe,' L totum)-- into heaven and earth, the male Uranus and female Gaea. Uranus "the Rainmaker" (FW, 87.06) impregnates Gaea's clefts and rivervalleys with rainwater, spawning the powerful Titans, or the Giants, which are etymologically "sons of Earth." (NS, 13) Uranus's strongest son, Cronus (the Roman Saturn), murders his father and castrates him with an enormous sickle--"an exitous erseroyal Deo Jupto." (FW, 353.18; 'exit of the once royal god, Jove'). This occurs in the "golden age" of Greece, or the divine age in the Viconian cycle (NS, 69). Gold is also the color Clive Hart assigns to this age. (Structure and Motif, 19)
The Wakean family's genesis also begins with the usurpation of power by a stronger, younger heir. Tim Finnegan, the god-like giant is replaced by Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker, or HCE, representing all heroes and mock-heroes. The scope of HCE's character is so immense that it includes Tim Finnegan and all the manifestations of him that recirculate in the living world--"the father of fornicationists." (FW, 4.12) Similarily, in the male line of Greek gods, the heir must commit "regicide" (FW, 162.01) in order to make room...
... middle of paper ...
...amily cycle continues as the Viconian historical cycles turn, "Gyre O, gyre O, gyrotundo!" (FW, 295.23) Prometheus's son, Deucalion, and Epimetheus' daughter, Pyrrha, become the new Adam and Eve, HCE and ALP. In the new cycle, man is created again by the domesticism of marriage where, "in the names of Deucalion and Pyrrha," (179.09) stones (bestial man, Jute) are throne over their shoulders to become civilized men (Mutt). (NS, 79)
Works Cited.
FW Joyce, James. Finnegans Wake. Viking Press : New York, 1976.
AP Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. Viking Press : New York, 1968.
NS Vico, Giambattista. The New Science of Giambattista Vico. 3rd ed. (1744). trans. by Bergin, T. G. and Fisch, M. H. Cornell University Press : London, 1991.
Hart, Clive. Structure and Motif in Finnegans Wake. Northwestern University Press, 1971.
...00s of years apart, and the Crucible wasn’t as harsh and bloody as the Holocaust. Both witch hunts killed off certain people that were discriminated against because of the word of one person. The modern day witch hunt, the Holocaust, was terrifying for the Jews, as well as other people, gypsies, homosexuals, and disabled people. The witch hunt back in the 1600s wasn’t as brutal against the people, and it was against whoever was convicted of being a witch, or committing a terrible crime. The groups of people that were harmed during these two witch hunts, lost everything, nothing in the world could relieve the pain they went through and suffered. The Jews lost 2/3 of their population in Europe, whereas the people in Salem lost their loved ones, and had to endure the torture of the court on their town, making them able to survive life after the witch trials were over
1 Joyce, James : The Dead , Norton Anthology of English Literature Vol.2, sixth edition
Campbell, Joseph. Mythic Worlds, Modern Words: On the Art of James Joyce. New York: Harper Collins, 1993.
made to say anything and what he is made to say directly propagates the Party's
The Crucible is a famous play written by Arthur Miller in the Early 1950’s. It was written during the “Red scare, when McCarthyism was established. Many anti-communists wanted to prevent communism from spreading just like in The Crucible many wanted to get rid of witchcraft. Many would accuse others of witchcraft in order to not be accused just like many would accuse people of communism. In The Crucible witchcraft would be punishable by death. Many were scared to be accused; therefore many would admit practicing witchcraft in order to save their lives. The Crucible is considered a good play because it is based on real life events during the Salem witch Trials and shows how fear played a role in the individual’s life just like during the “Red” scare.
The crucible’s setting was in the year 1962, in the small Puritan society of Salem. One night some of the girls in the village were in the woods doing love potions when they were caught. The girls lied and said that witches made them do it. In an extremely religeous society the influence of witches was immensely frightening and as the thought to identify witches arose, so did mass hysteria of the...
Fairhall, James. James Joyce and the Question of History. Cambridge University Press. New York, New York: 1993.
it parallels present day society in the U.S. in many ways. Yet at the same time,
The significance of the title The War of The Worlds is that there is a war between two worlds. The novel title The War of The Worlds is symbolic because it is...
Kumar, Udaya. The Joycean Labyrinth: Repetition, Time, and Tradition in Ulysses. Oxford: Clarendon P, 1991.
At the heart of James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man lies Stephen Dedalus, a sensitive young man concerned with discovering his purpose in life. Convinced that his lack of kinship or community with others is a shortcoming that he must correct, Stephen, who is modeled after Joyce, endeavors to fully realize himself by attempting to create a forced kinship with others. He tries many methods in hopes of achieving this sense of belonging, including the visiting of prostitutes and nearly joining the clergy. However, it is not until Stephen realizes, as Joyce did, that his true calling is that of the artist that he becomes free of his unrelenting, self-imposed pressure to force connections with others and embraces the fact that he, as an artist, is fully realized only when he is alone.
Levin, Harry. "The Artist." James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man: Text, Criticism, and Notes. Ed. Chester G. Anderson. New York: Penguin, 1968. 399-415.
James Joyce's fragment of a novel, Stephen Hero, leaves the reader little room to interpret the text for themselves. The work lacks the narrative distance that Joyce achieves in his later works. Dubliners, a work Joyce was writing concurrently, seemingly employs a drastically different voice. A voice which leaves the reader room to make judgments of their own. Yet it is curious that Joyce could produce these two works at the same time, one that controls the reader so directly, telling not showing , while the other, Dubliners, seems to give the reader the power of final interpretation over the characters it portrays.
Joyce, James. A Portriat of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Penguin Books, 1976.
Joyce, James. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. New York: Penguin Group,