num_pages: 232
description: Incoherence and trope are usually thought of as devices that hinder readers' understanding of a text because they use language that is out of the ordinary. On the Void of to Be reveals that in Joyce's Finnegans Wake, incoherence is a productive force, and tropes - if not ordinary - are so pervasive as to be paradigm rather than exception. In reading Finnegans Wake, then, one moves from incoherence to coherence. Sailer argues that meaning lies in learning to find connections within what at first seems to be a chaos of disconnections.While other writers, such as Kristeva and Derrida, have explored Finnegans Wake from theoretical perspectives, their texts tend to overlay Joyces' work with a specific theory, utilizing what is congenial to that theory and discounting the rest. Susan Shaw Sailer ultimately takes a far more integrated view, accommodating neither theory nor Finnegans Wake at the other's expense, and frequently illuminating both.
language: English
title: On the Void of to Be: Incoherence and Trope in Finnegans Wake
titlecomplete: On the Void of to Be: Incoherence and Trope in Finnegans Wake
ratings_count: 1
publisher: Univ of Michigan Pr