ABSTRACT
Masculine and feminine are modes of language in Finnegans Wake as they are in the theories of Jacques Lacan. After showing how the genders are divided linguistically, I will describe how the subject or self is formed by their interaction. Masculine and feminine language functions contribute to every personality, but the opposite sex is usually projected onto someone or something else in order to separate the subject from an object. This process can be illustrated vividly by close reading of a passage from the Wake that assembles the family complex of the book, showing how masculine and feminine arise as aspects of a single mind that sees itself in other things.
