Annotations to Finnegans Wake

By Roland McHugh

Book Overview

McHugh's Annotations explicates foreign words, English overtones, place names, personal names, phrases parodied, song titles and quotations, literary sources, historical events, and more. Most notable is the arrangement of the book: each page corresponds, line by line, and word-placement by work-placement, with a page of Finnegans Wake. By placing the two books side by side, the reader can eliminate the need to consult alphabetical lists, indexes, or other devices in other handbooks.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801822599
• ISBN13: 9780801822599
• Release Date: June 1980
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 640 Pages
• Weight: 2.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.8" x 0.6" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

A REFERENCE book

This book is most helpful for pointing out the puns made in languages with which one is not familiar. It also helps with some of the historical and literary allusions. IT IS NOT A BOOK THAT IS A GUIDE TO READING FINNEGANS WAKE. That said, it is nevertheless invaluable as a reference book when reading the Wake.

Great help

The Annotations is a very helpful reference, pure and simple. Even for those familiar with the nightlife of the Wake, Annotations to Finnegans Wake invariably points out literary redlight districts that have escaped the reader's attention. This book is also simple to use - it is identically paginated to the Wake so there is no confusing looking for the right page. Etymology is provided where necessary, and there are the usual plethora of allusions. A quick review of this book before reading Joyce's Finnegans Wake considerably increases the percentage of puns, parodies, allusions, and portmanteau words you will understand while reading. Not an absolute requirement for reading Finnegans Wake but doubtless a great help.

An Invaluable Tool For Making It Through The Wake

I found this book invaluable in studying Finnegans Wake. There is a brief introduction followed by a 1 to 1 mapping of each line and page of the Wake. I've found no other source with a better brief annotative structure that this one.

a succinct,useful, and functional assistant for "Wake-ing"

"Annotations to Finnegans Wake" uses a simple format: matching the "Wake" page-for-page, placing glosses on the page at points corresponding to the passage annotated. So, if you're stumped by a passage in the middle of page ten, you merely glance at page ten in McHugh's volume at mid-page. McHugh combines this with a handful of "sigla" -- symbols or signs of basic concepts/themes central to the "Wake" (and used by Joyce himself in the book's composition...)(see McHugh's "Sigla of Finnegans Wake" [op] for a brief but enlightening treatise on this subject...). This, too, provides quick and ready deciphering. Glosses are cogent but accurate and useful -- a minumum of bald speculation and "allusion chasing." This is a *great* reference work -- perhaps one of the two or three "indispensible" books for "Wake" studies, and a great springboard for focusing future study....