Abstract
What is the first problem on looking into Finnegans Wake? Determining the relation between the discrete episodes within the work and the overall coherence of the narrative. Derrida suggests a form of approach to this problem when he writes: ‘Each writing is at once the detached fragment of a software and a software more powerful than the other, a part larger than the whole of which it is a part’ (Derrida 1984, 148). The problem of reading is thus one of relating parts to wholes and Derrida’s suggested programme of reading is to assess the whole as smaller than (or as only viewable through) the parts.
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© 1998 Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
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Banham, G. (1998). Water and Women in Finnegans Wake. In: Brannigan, J., Ward, G., Wolfreys, J. (eds) Re: Joyce Text ● Culture ● Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26348-6_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-26348-6_12
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