Finnegans Wake is a work of comic fiction by Irish author James Joyce, significant for an experimental style and its resulting reputation as one of the most difficult works of fiction in the English language.[1][2] Written in Paris over a period of 17 years, and published in 1939, two years before the author's death, Finnegans Wake was Joyce's final work. The entire book is written in an idiosyncratic language, consisting of multilingual puns and portmanteau words, which attempts to recreate the experience of sleep and dreams.[3] Due to its expansive linguistic experiments, stream of consciousness writing style, literary allusions, free dream associations, and its abandonment of conventions of plot and character construction, Finnegans Wake remains largely unread by the general public.[4][5]
Despite these obstacles, readers and commentators have reached a broad consensus about the book's central cast of characters and, to a lesser degree, its plot. However, a significant number of details remain elusive.[6] The book treats, in an unorthodox fashion, the Earwicker family, composed of the father HCE, the mother ALP, and their three children Shem the Penman, Shaun the Post, and Issy. Following an unspecified rumour about HCE, the book, in a nonlinear dream narrative,[7] follows his wife's attempts to exonerate him with a letter, his sons' struggle to replace him, Shaun's rise to prominence, and a final monologue by ALP at the break of dawn. The opening line of the book is a sentence fragment, which continues from the book's unfinished closing line, making the work a never-ending cycle.[8]
Synopsis compliments of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnegans_Wake
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