/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.8216529]

I can read Middle English, French, Middle French and German. Am I good to go to read this hands-free or are Italian and Irish necessary?

[Anonymous No.8216923]

Learn to read modern English too.

[Anonymous No.8217014]

>>8216529
There are 64 languages in the Wake: you'll never be "ready," so don't worry about it. If you've read Dubliners, Portrait, and Ulysses, and listened to a few old recordings of Joyce reading a few parts of the Wake to get the feel of the word flow and lilting accents, you're good to go. If you get stuck, I recommend Joseph Campbell's A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake.

[Anonymous No.8218028]

>>8217014
>64 languages
Surely not 64 main ones, but I guess it's a consolation still that Joyce himself didn't speak them all.
>old recordings
Sadly I never can manage to like his voice (meaning his vocal, mouth, throat, sound? voice, not writing voice) and intonation, and other recordings don't seem to hit the right brogue...

[Anonymous No.8218592]

Could Joyce even speak Gaeilge? He seems to be the typical classcially trained Dubliner of the Pale, he didn't have much interest in the cultural nationalism of the Celtic Twilight or the language

[Anonymous No.8218874]

I'll just leave this here.

[Anonymous No.8218910]

You're supposed to be able to read Finnegans Wake with only knowledge of English. It's an English novel.
You won't get every single pun/puzzle/joke/whatever, but no one is getting every single thing, especially on the first time through.

[Anonymous No.8218923]

>>8218874
What the hell does this mean?

[Anonymous No.8218936]

>>8218923
Now you understand why you shouldn't let yourself get memed into buying Finnegans Wake.

[Anonymous No.8220772]

>>8218936
At least Finnegans Wake isn't larger than my screen