ABSTRACT
The author suggests that locating Finnegans Wake in the world of the dream was Joyce’s attempt to take control of his persecuting nightmares. His intense involvement, writing often late into the night, could be Joyce trying to get the better of his internal world—he would craft his own dreams! Finnegans Wake, like Ulysses, is again a saga of guilt and confusion but Joyce finds a levity and poetry as well as connection, loyalty and forgiveness. Later in life, Joyce seemed to experience a sense of belonging and intimacy within his close circle in exile. He would have felt in the centre of things and not like a usurper so characteristic of the replacement child. In making Finnegans Wake a tribute to his father, he gives meaning and worth to his own existence, becoming a legitimate son. By creating memorable poetry about Anna Livia Plurabelle, ‘the Allmaziful, the Everliving, the Bringer of Plurabilities’, Joyce was reunited with the lost mother. Finnegans Wake is compared with The Winter’s Tale, Shakespeare’s late play of jealousy, abandonment and reparation in which the mother, Hermione, is turned from stone and brought back to life.
