https://www.onelittlegoat.org/finneganswake

Welcome to James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. In this episode we’ll hear Irish-Canadian actor Richard Harte reading pages 19 to 24 of Joyce’s last novel, which will include the famous “prankquean” fable, with an introduction by director Adam Seelig.

Richard’s reading (pages 19:20-24:15) was recorded with a live audience in Toronto on 31 August 2022.

For a transcript of this episode, please visit https://www.onelittlegoat.org/podcast.

“James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake” is produced by One Little Goat Theatre Company, an official charity in Canada and USA. If you’d like to support our work, please visit us online to make a charitable donation.

To get in touch, email us at onelittlegoattc@gmail.com — we’d love to hear from you.

This podcast is made possible by Friends of One Little Goat Theatre Company and the Emigrant Support Programme of the Government of Ireland. Thank you for your support!

Thank you to Darina Gallagher and the James Joyce Centre in Dublin for your partnership.

Thank you to the artists for this episode: Kevin Kennedy, Sound by William Bembridge, Podcast production by Sean Rasmussen, Stage Management by Laura Lakatosh, Rehearsal Stage Management by Sandi Becker, Directed by Adam Seelig.

Thanks to our live audience of Pip Dwyer, Cathy Murphy, Nomi Rotbard, Arlo Rotbard-Seelig; and thanks to our rehearsal audience of Jackie Chau, Jordy Koffman, Andrew Moodie & Shai Rotbard-Seelig.

Thank you to the Embassy of Ireland in Ottawa and the Irish Consulate in Toronto and to Production Consultants Cathy Murphy and Andrew Moodie.

Thank you for listening!

Mentioned: Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), puns, Mother Goose, Hans Christian Andersen, the “prankquean”, linear/nonlinear narrative, fables, fairy tales, tripartite structure, Hope Beer in Howth, Grace O’Malley, Earl of Howth, Howth Castle, Baily Lighthouse, Jarl (Danish “chief”), Eden, Adam and Eve, quean and queen, ancient storytelling cadences, the word “And…”, Hebrew Bible, Genesis, second thunderword, wordplay with twins’ names, family unit, “meanderthalltale”, “writing its own wrunes”, ALP and HCE, felix culpa and happy fall, whiskey as water of life, synopsis.

Resources:

Transcript for this episode, including the text of Finnegans Wake pages 19-24.
Finnegans Wake (1939) by James Joyce: there are many free copies of FW to read online or download, e.g. finwake.comJames Joyce Digital Archive, “Chicken Guide” to Finnegans Wake provides a ‘plain English’ paraphrase of each chapter by Danis Rose.
Brendan Ward’s blog post on the “prankquean”.

Edmund Epstein, A Guide through Finnegans Wake. University Press of Florida, 2009.

William York Tindall, A Reader’s Guide to Finnegans Wake. Syracuse University Press, 1996.

Roland McHugh, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (4th edition). Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2016.

John Gordon’s annotations on his Finnegans Wake blog.

Richard Ellmann’s biography of James Joyce. Oxford University Press, 1982.

Cited:

Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), trans. Joyce Crick. Oxford University Press, 1999.

“Stories of Howth”, Hope Beer website.