Death and Resurrection in Finnegans Wake

This close reading of Joyce's masterwork will unravel and reweave some of the major themes of this amazing and difficult literary artifact, including its complex fusion of mythological, religious, historical, and cultural strands. Finnegans Wake has been called a "dream confessional" and a "titanic fusion of all mythologies" (Dionysius, Jesus, Osiris, Finn MacCool) wherein the reader traverses the universal paths of sin and fall, death and resurrection, and everything in between. This offering of the seminar will focus on Book I of Finnegans Wake, with Books II-III and the Ricorso to be taken up in future offerings.