Finnegans Wake Reading Challenge

Does the notion of reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake occasionally pass through your mind only to be discarded by the potential arduousness of the task? Or maybe you are seasoned Joycean academic who would relish the idea of a(nother) close reading of the text. If either of these are true, then this may be just the of the challenge for you.

In a joint venture, Writing Development and the International College invite you to a collective reading of this Joycean masterpiece. The idea is simple, to remove the trauma of reading it/to facilitate close reading it, only 10 pages of the book are to be read each week; there will be a teams site where people can post any insights or questions about the text.

There will be no fixed agenda of meetings to discuss it, but maybe a meeting might be arranged every so often if participants would like it.

The book will not be supplied by the project but there are a couple of copies in the library and it is relatively inexpensive to obtain anyway.

If you would like to participate (just trying is perfectly acceptable) please contact either gfreestone@lincoln.ac.uk (Graham) or arowcroft@lincoln.ac.uk (Andrew) and we’ll add you to the teams site.

The challenge will commence with pages 1-10 on Monday 29 April. With a few extra pages maybe added here and there as we go, we can hopefully finish on Bloomsday 2025.

For Joyce, Ulysses was the book of the day, Finnegans Wake the book of the night. Maybe reading the book of the night is an appropriate medicine for these dark times.

Story submitted by Graham Freestone
gfreestone@lincoln.ac.uk