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/lit/ - Literature

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14980882 No.14980882 [Reply] [Original]

I finished Ulysses a while back, and to prepare for that I was advised to first read Dubliners and Portrait of the Artist (as they essentially are the prelude to the narrative of Ulysses), and to also read Hamlet, the Odyssey and the Inferno, as Joyce draws on them quite substantially in his allusions and symbolism.

What are the books that one should read before Finnegans Wake, so as to fully appreciate the book? I want to write notes like pic related.

>> No.14980894

cool way to make a book impossible to reread normally

>> No.14980900

>>14980882
>clitoris is the only word in black ink
what did she mean by this?

>> No.14980901

btw you have to read everything on this list (at least from before the 20th century)
http://interleaves.org/~rteeter/grtbloom.html

>> No.14980903

>>14980882
Pfffft. Read literally every Western and Eastern canonical work (this includes poetry, drama, fiction, philosophy, and theology) up until the book was published.

>> No.14980907

>>14980900
looks like a different person made that note

>> No.14980930

>>14980901
oh and you also need to know at least 7 languages

>> No.14980933

>>14980901
>>14980930
and even then you'll only get like 5% of the references in the book

>> No.14980940

>>14980901

I've actually seen that list before. Pretty cool compilation but the actually book within which it's contained had kind of a goofy thesis, with respects to the 26 authors he said were canonical. Like

>Samuel Beckett
Derivative
>George Elliott
Who?
>Freud
.

>> No.14980944

>>14980933

Ah

>> No.14980950

Sentence 2 - 3 is that Aristophanes's The Frogs

that's all I got

>> No.14980973

>>14980940
>Who?
dude...

>> No.14981779

Just start reading it. Let yourself get into the flow. Finnegans wake is incredibly phonetic, you need to get yourself into the dreamlike state it's trying to create. Just start reading and don't stop to understand it, sound the words out in your head like someone is speaking.
Then once you've read over a section, go back again and try and find why it felt like it did. What were the allusions that were playing with your subconscious? What language made it remind you of X or Y?
You won't fully appreciate it or understand it. You'd have to be impossibly well read and even then you won't fully get it, but if you are even slightly well read, you'll be able to get enough of the allusions that it starts making some sense.
I find that I get into "the flow" best when I've smoked marijuana. You can do it without, but it's much easier. I then go back and re-read when I'm sober.

>> No.14981826

>>14980882
Read Portrait then Ulysses and that's basically all you can do, read out loud as well.

>> No.14982103

>>14981779
>>14981826

cheers to both of you I'll bear that in mind. I was thinking of just reading one or two pages a day, and writing down my interpretation of each in notebook as I went along. Sorta add it to my morning routine along with language practice and make treat the book more like boomers used newspaper crosswords, than how I read Joyce's previous works.

Thoughts? Legitimate idea or cancer?