Finnegans Awake: The Dream of Interpretation

This essay examines the notion that Finnegans Wake is the representation of a dream. It argues that a reader coming to the work with no prior assumptions would be unlikely to regard it as a dream, since there is little internal evidence for this interpretation; that, although Joyce promoted the idea that the Wake is connected to sleep, it was Edmund Wilson who first claimed the work represents a single dream; and that this perspective nevertheless offers a productive way of reading the Wake—alongside a number of other equally productive perspectives.