Joyce's Punctuation and the Evolution of Narrative in Finnegans Wake

Many innovations in James Joyce's Finnegans Wake (1939), often considered a limit case for literature, derive from Joyce's punctuation decisions. These decisions include using dashes to mark the boundaries of speech, removing hyphens from compound words and employing parentheses for multiple interrupting voices. By drawing upon manuscript material, revisions, and printed versions of Joyce's texts, I compare the punctuation of Joyce's earlier works to that of Finnegans Wake in order to show how Joyce's use of experimental punctuation indicates the boundaries between thought, speech, and voice in Finnegans Wake, thus establishing a new narrative mode.