James Joyce's Finnegans Wake Quotes

“experience will be more retrogressive than progressive. Inevitably readers follow the injunction to “Forget, remember!” (FW 614.22) by forgetting more than they can remember so that each reading will become, in effect, a new remembering: “all that has been done has yet to be done and done again” (FW 194.10”
― III, John Harty, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: A Casebook

“Areas of Consciousness The Rational (Day) Philosophy, history 1. Cognition and knowledge is treated in Finnegans Wake. a. Myth: history as a nightmare b. Theory: history as a joke. 2. History of mankind/history of Ireland 3. Popular and Formal Culture a. Music -Musical hall and popular song/ballads, Irish folk music b. Sports, boating, etc. c. Technology d. Science and cosmology e. Cinema and still photography The Irrational (Night) Pre-Sleep World (all the puzzling images that flash through our minds before we fall asleep). Jungian, collective unconscious Left and right sides of the brain Id/ego/superego Anima and Animus Techniques of Tension: the circle, twinning, yang and yin of reconciliation of opposites, yoking, transmission into other areas of being, intertexuality. Techniques of Style: Portmanteau words, punning, piling of one image upon the other, montage, doubling, etc. The Language Trap: The tyranny of language             The betrayal of language             Rhetorical traps             Decay of language”
― III, John Harty, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: A Casebook

“According to Vico, primitive man, surprised in the sexual act by a clap of thunder, is stricken with fear and guilt at what he imagines is the angered voice of God. He retires into a cave to conceal his activities and it is this act which inaugurates civilisation. Language arises when man attempts to reproduce the sound of thunder with his own vocal organs.”
― III, John Harty, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake: A Casebook