Joyce's Allmaziful Plurabilities ― Polyvocal Explorations of Finnegans Wake

“A brilliantly collaged snapshot of the variety and wealth of literary criticism, and Joyce studies, today.”—Tony Thwaites, author of Joycean Temporalities

“Celebrates the multiplicity and sheer rampant excess of Joyce’s prodigally polysemous text with seventeen different scholars employing a likewise prodigal range of critical methodologies.”—Patrick O’Neill, author of Impossible Joyce: Finnegans Wakes

“Each of the scholars involved is at the top of his and her game. Their commitment and excitement about the task at hand is evident on virtually every page. This book makes the Wake relevant and accessible to a whole new generation of readers.”—Garry Leonard, author of Advertising and Commodity Culture in Joyce

This is the first Finnegans Wake guide to focus exclusively on the multiple meanings and voices in Joyce’s notoriously intricate diction. Rather than leveling the text it illuminates many layers of puns, wordplay, and portmanteaus, celebrating the Wake’s central experimental technique.
Renowned Joyce scholars explore the polyvocality of individual chapters using game theory, ecocriticism, psychoanalysis, historicism, myth, philosophy, genetic studies, feminism, and other critical frameworks. They set in motion cross-currents and radiating structures of meaning that permeate the entire text and open up satisfying readings of the Wake for novices and seasoned readers alike.

Kimberly J. Devlin is professor of English at the University of California, Riverside. She is the author of James Joyce’s “Fraudstuff” and Wandering and Return in Finnegans Wake. Christine Smedley is lecturer in English at the University of California, Riverside.