Joseph Campbell

Edmund L. Epstein

Henry Morton Robinson

Since its publication in 1939, countless would-be readers of Finnegans Wake - James Joyce's masterwork, which consumed a third of his life - have given up after a few pages, dismissing it as a "perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first "key" or guide to entering the fascinating, disturbing, marvelously rich world of Finnegans Wake. The authors break down Joyce's "unintelligible" book page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up thoughtful interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary. They outline the book's basic action, and then simplify ? and clarify ? its complex web of images and allusions. A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake is the latest addition to the Collected Works of Joseph Campbell series.

Unlocking James Joyce's Masterwork

A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake

This book guides readers through the complex, pun-based, and dreamlike narrative of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake. Defying conventions of plot and continuity, Finnegans Wake has been challenging readers since its first publication in 1939. The novel is so famously difficult that it is widely agreed that only the brave or foolhardy attempt to unravel this well-known but relatively little-read classic.

A Guide Through Finnegans Wake

E. L. Epstein

mund L. Epstein

In his pursuit of the unknown in Joyce’s works, Edmund Epstein has made new discoveries of Joyce through an astonishing range of refer­ences and documentation, from Hebrew to Classical and modern European thought. This book will be of immediate and invaluable significance not only to Joyce scholars but to students and readers of modern literature in general. The pattern Epstein sees in Joyce’s works is the conflict of genera­tions, the recurring pattern of human nature which Joyce sought to discover and describe. Mr. Epstein follows Joyce’s working of the process through A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man to its climax in Ulysses, and constantly refers to Finnegans Wake for corroboration and perspective. Valuable in itself for its new reading of Joyce, Epstein’s work offers new interpretations of themes and symbols which have heretofore puzzled Joyce scholars.

The Conflict of the Generations in James Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

The Ordeal of Stephen Dedalus

Robert Kole

In this unprecedented anthology, some of the most prolific and widely read African novelists are analysed.

The Language of African Literature

William Golding

A Novel Y William Golding; with a Biograhical and Critical Note by E.L. Epstein

Lord of the Files

Robert Golding

The classic study of human nature which depicts the degeneration of a group of schoolboys marooned on a desert island.

Lord of the Flies

Countless would-be readers of Finnegans Wake — James Joyce’s 1939 masterwork, on which he labored for a third of his life — have given up after a few pages and “dismissed the book as a perverse triumph of the unintelligible.” In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with novelist and poet Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first guide to understanding the fascinating world of Finnegans Wake. Page by page, chapter by chapter, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake outlines the basic action of Joyce’s book, simplifies and clarifies the complex web of images and allusions, and provides an understandable, continuous narrative from which the reader can venture out on his or her own. This edition includes a foreword and updates by Joyce scholar Dr. Edmund L. Epstein that add the context of sixty subsequent years of scholarship.

Edmund L. Epstein

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