Annotations to Finnegans Wake: Amazon.ca: Professor Roland McHugh: Books

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"Unravels the mysteries of James Joyce." -- Herbert Mitgang, New York Times

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The biggest stumbling block facing any prospective reader of "Finnegans Wake" is the book itself, with its thousands of words of Joyce's inventions, derived from nearly every foreign language imaginable and from a host of other sources. Now extensively revised, expanded, and corrected, Roland McHugh's "Annotations" is a unique one-volume guidebook designed to be read side by side with the "Wake" itself.

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5 Reviews

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3.6 out of 5 stars (5 customer reviews)

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars okay, Mar 10 2002

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supastar (brooklyn) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Annotations to Finnegans Wake (Paperback)

so many things he misses, so much obvious stuff he includes, and so little detail on the meaning of some of the annotations end up making this book somewhat of a nuisance, breaking up the flow which makes the Wake enjoyable. I still prefer Joseph Campbell's Skeleton Key to FW, though it admits that it does not try to catch every allusion. I find that most of the things that I really do want to find out, where I hear some echo of something, he doesn't touch on, or doesn't touch on to my satisfaction. Really, this project should be a collaboration online where people would add their comments to the possible meanings of different lines, because there are so many. Each man comes at it with his own knowledge, interests and needs, and can't get everything. So while this is useful for some, it's more of an impediment for me. A tattered security blanket that trips you up while you walk, you feel like Linus from peanuts lugging out this big blue thing.

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4.0 out of 5 stars A REFERENCE book, Mar 26 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Annotations to Finnegans Wake (Paperback)

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.

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3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing, Dec 4 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Annotations to Finnegans Wake (Paperback)

Roland McHugh is an admirable Joyce scholar and most certainly knows more about the Wake than I, but I must say this book is not at all what I was looking for in an annotated guide. I was expecting the format of Ulysses Annotated, but instead was confronted with a very different mode of operation. McHugh's book is very useful in two areas, those being 1.)Foreign Words and 2.)Joyce's compound words. This is because the author presents the annotations as if they were personal notes in his own copy of the Wake, rather than full explications as found in Ulysses Annotated. McHugh argues that this will force the reader to make his own connections and lead to more frutiful conclusions, but the same goal could be accomplished by simply doing what McHugh has done, read FW, study it, and make notes of your own. Any beginner who is not familiar with some of the primary themes of the Wake will be sorely disappointed. The best example of the way McHugh skims over these is found in the preface (which I believe can be previewed on this site), where he shows how in a regular annotated guide a reference to Giambattista Vico would take up 9 lines of text, briefly explaining his theory, and in his own method it is simply referred to as 'Vico'. This reference would mean absolutely nothing to a reader unfamiliar with Vico. For a reader seeking to add a little convenience to their own personal study, this is perfect. For the reader seeking (relatively) full explanations of historical and literary allusions and such, this is most certainly not the guide to get. This book would have been exponentially more useful had it simply been integrated into the text of FW, ie one page of FW, one page of annotations.

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Most recent customer reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars To use the code book, you need the code-DEcoding book...
The Annotations is a very helpful reference, pure and simple. Even for those familiar with the nightlife of the Wake, ANNO. Read more

Published on Aug 2 2000 by John McConnell

5.0 out of 5 stars 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. Read more

Published on Feb 23 1998