In the Wake of Fair Use: Incest, Citation and the Legal Legacy of Finnegans Wake

Reconsidering Carol Loeb Shloss's Lucia Joyce: To Dance in the Wake as implicated in a Joycean "textual incest," this article proposes that the controversial biography of Joyce's daughter misreads moments of incest in Finnegans Wake. The problematic speculations and sources, which earned Shloss years of litigation from the Joyce Estate, stem in part from her attempts to embody the daughter's voice, and from her overreliance on the Wake as a confessional text. The juncture of incest and citation, as it appears in book II chapter 2 of the Wake—the gloss-laden "Nightlessons"—serves as an entry point into Joyce's erotic conception of literary history and production, which challenges not only Shloss's claims but the recent legal actions of his grandson and heir, Stephen James Joyce.