James Joyce, as introduced in class today, is an insane, lying, drunkard. Someone who enjoyed wordplay and languages. He was the writer of two great literary works: Finnegans Wake and Ulysses.
Carn - of or associated with the flesh. James Joyce's literature can be viewed in a very carnal fashion. Ulysses and Finnegans Wake are to be enjoyed in a visceral fashion.
Paronomasia is a fancy way of talking about word play, puns even. Joyce played with words often. He knew around 20 languages and would incorporate them into his puns. Even the title of Finnegans Wake is a pun. Joyce based his novel off of an Irish folk song about Tim Finnegan. Finnegan dies and his friends throw him an Irish wake, and, in the process, they spill whiskey on him and he comes back to life. In French fin means the end, or death. Tim Finnegan is fin again after his wake.
The novel itself is a "fin again." The novel begins in the middle of a sentence and ends with the beginning of a sentence. The beginning of the first sentence of the book in fact. Finnegans Wake begins "riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs." And Finnegans Wake ends "A way a lone a last a loved a long the."
James Joyce was an interesting person. He writes about himself in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. He writes that it is his duty "to forge in the smithy of [his]soul the uncreated consciousness of my race." I wonder if his arrogance is justifiable.
Finnegans Wake and Ulysses are memory maps for Joyce. "mememoreme" could be a way of saying remember.
Anamesis - when what we have forgotten is important and our task is to remember
