Joyce's Book of the Dark: Finnegans Wake (Revised)

By John Bishop

Book Overview

Proverbs, though anonymous, speak with great authority, and politicians from classical to modern times have deployed them effectively in their rhetoric. In looking at political proverbs in the twentieth century, Wolfgang Mieder the leading expert on proverbs today offers proof of the power of these bits of borrowed wisdom to serve any master or any purpose, for good or ill.
Mieder first singles out Adolf Hitler s Mein Kampf, in which the Fuhrer used proverbs to advocate the deadly goals of Nazism. Pitted against Hitler s rhetoric is that of Winston Churchill, who was, Mieder demonstrates, as gifted with the proverb as any leader in this century. He moves next to America and Harry S. Truman, whose proverbial plain English won him the trust of the people.
The politics of the Cold War made ample use of proverbs as well, a trend Mieder illustrates through cartoons and caricatures of the time. He also traces the origin, history, meaning, and use of two proverbial slurs, one against Native Americans ( The only good Indian is a dead Indian ) and the other against Asian Americans ( No tickee, no washee. )
The Politics of Proverbs offers a historical view, but also shows that new proverbs are continually coined and passed into common parlance, and old proverbs are updated to suit modern situations. Mieder s lively and instructive examples show how anyone, whether on the political grandstand or the back porch, can exploit the supposed wisdom of proverbs to justify his or her opinions and actions. By exposing the use and function of the proverb in political rhetoric, this book alerts readers to the possibilities and dangers and the expressive power of these not so quaint sayings."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0299108244
• ISBN13: 9780299108243
• Release Date: June 1993
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Length: 496 Pages
• Weight: 2.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 7.9" x 10.1"

Customer Reviews

An essential book for understanding Finnegans Wake

This is the best book I've found to serve as a companion on a descent into the depths of "Finnegans Wake." It will deepen a reader's understanding of Joyce's methods. The author's insights are original and exciting - unlike some other books, this one actually made me eager to jump back into Joyce's book, sure I would see things in a new light. I'm coming close to completing my first reading of the Wake. I understand now that it's a book you need to read many times. For this first pass, though, Joseph Campbell's "Skeleton Key" and this "Book of the Dark" were great guides.

"Nothing will ever make Finnegans Wake not obscure."

Unlike any other book in English literature, James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (Penguin Twentieth-Century Classics) is written entirely on the level of dream consciousness. Joycean scholar John Bishop has tightly focused his attention solely on the *dream* and *sleep* aspects of Finnegans Wake. While this makes for a rather monochromatic presentation sometimes bordering the banal, the scholarship, clarity, and thrust of Bishop's presentation are indisputable. There's so much depth and breadth in Finnegans Wake that Bishop's restrained scholarship is required to understand just this one aspect of it. From Bishop's text, pages 4-7: "Suppose we charged ourselves with the task of providing in chronological order a detailed account of everything that occurred to us NOT last night ... but in the first half-hour of last night's sleep. The 'hole affair' [535.20], (and a 'hole', unlike a 'whole', has no content), will likely summon up a sustained 'blank memory' [515.33]: 'You wouldn't should as youd remesner, I hypnot' [360.23-24]. What would become equally obscure, even questionable, is the stability of identity... No one remembers the experience of sleep at all as a sequence of events linked chronologically in time by cause and effect." Joyce remarked to his friend William Bird: "About my new work - do you know, Bird, I confess I can't understand some of my critics, like Pound or Miss Weaver, for instance. They say it's *obscure*. They compare it, of course, with Ulysses. But the action of Ulysses was chiefly in the daytime, and the action of my new work takes place chiefly at night. It's natural things should not be so clear at night, isn't it now?" Bishop's book is superb scholarship and a major key to understanding the dream and sleep aspects of Finnegans Wake.

One of the top 5 books on "Finnegans Wake"

This guy's read "Finnegans Wake" a thousand times, so it seems, and his knowledge of Joyce and environs is wide. I'd recommend "Joyce's Book of the Dark" for you Wakeans out there who need to dig deeper into the book of the delpth.

For Joyce fanatics -- so deep it's mindboggling

The ultimate treatment of Joyce's confusing classic, Bishop's comprehensive analysis goes beyond typical literary interpretations. Focusing of such diverse influences as Vico's "New Science" and The Egyptian Book of the Dead, Bishop shows the compexity of Joyce, as well as his almost total command of the English language, and language in general. If you've ever wondered about Vico's historical thesis, and want to understand how Vico permeates Joyce, this is the book to read. In the end, you'll come away with a better appreciation of Joyce's text, and a feeling of amazement at Vico's poorly understood, but far-sighted view of mankind.