Trouble in Paradise: Violence and the Phoenix Park in Finnegans Wake

This essay uses the early drafts of Finnegans Wake to explore Joyce’s positioning of Phoenix Park as a nexus of violence, conflict, and class struggle. It traces the Park’s history from royal hunting ground to urban oasis, highlighting the social, historical, and cultural layers that Joyce enfolds into the Wake. I argue that Joyce attempts to refute the notion of peaceful nature by instead constructing a vision in which violence and nature are indelibly intertwined.