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/lit/ - Literature

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3035146 No.3035146[DELETED]  [Reply] [Original]

Finnegans Wake. Two books per semester. Books IV and I first semester, books II and III second semester.

Book IV is the best place for new readers to start in FW. The language is simplest and the prose is most beautiful. The story is also easier to follow.

In classes, we would read a page or so out loud every day. We would work from Joyce's published notes and drafts, going backwards from the published text to the original root idea and source text for each line.

We would research allusions, study myth, and read excerpts from books that inspired the more interesting or dense passages.

Nightly reading would be supplemented by Joseph Campbell's Skeleton's Key to Finnegan's Wake.

The walls of the classroom would have a map of Dublin noting important locations, a map of Ireland, a map of the British Isles, and a world map. All would be heavily marked up with red ink lines. There would also be a timeline stretching over all four walls noting ancient civilizations and the corresponding thunder word for each.

Each student would be required to recite from memory a two page section of the wake at least three times every semester.

The final project would be a short (~20 page) FW-alike book. Like Joyce, students would begin with a basic plot outline and lay out a base story. Their job would then be expand on each line adding allusions, myths, and cycles from those they've studied all year. For extra credit, they can recite their entire book from memory before the class.

>> No.3035152
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3035152

Teach me, OP

>> No.3035153
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3035153

>Believing FW is anything other than random, meaningless drivel

>> No.3035154

If there was such a class, I would gladly welcome a nuclear holocaust.

>> No.3035157

Imagine if you let Harold Bloom mandate the education of a generation

Imagine how fucking stupid everyone would be

>> No.3035163

In addition, any student who legally changes his middle name to a thunder word gets an automatic A+.

>> No.3035164

Sounds nice, but really it's a bit ridiculous for high school aged kids. There are far better places their studying could be directed to...

>> No.3035179

>>3035153
As if America's best writer spent 20 years working on "meaningless drivel"...

>> No.3035181

what's with the focus on memorization?

>> No.3035186

>>3035157
Harold Bloom wouldn't put Finnegans Wake in his syllabus. He probably wouldn't even put any Joyce on.

Instead he'd make you read Kafka's Hunter Gracchus, Tolstoy's Hadji Murad, Faulkner's As I Lay Dying, all of Proust and a shit ton of poetry.

Nice try insulting His Highness Harold Bloom, you faggot.

>> No.3035187

>>3035181
Much of the depth of Finnegans Wake is in the sounds of individual words and phrases. The text is filled with sound-based puns and multi-paragraph rhymes. Memorization is the best way to focus study on that portion of Joyce's masterwork.

>> No.3035192

>>3035187
>Much of the depth of Finnegans Wake

Jesus. Being this wrong this early in your post.

>> No.3035205

>>3035186

who wouldn't enjoy being harold bloom, getting paid to read books and fat-pose, flab spilling off a creaking ribcage, pushed to the brink of physical capacity in maintaining a semblance of bipedal figure, helpless to the vain judgment of english majors who live vicariously through their idols like devoted protestant scum of yore because you can't waddle fast enough to catch and beat their asses