This post discusses more of Chapter I.8, including the gossip of the washerwomen and the gifts for the children of ALP. It extends my overview of the chapter.
Continue readingGossip and Gifts
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Category Archives: Close Reading
The Gifts of Anna Livia Plurabelle
In chapter I.8, the washerwomen describe ALP arriving
with a Christmas box apiece for aisch and iveryone of her childer, the birthday gifts they dreamt they gabe her, the spoiled she fleetly laid at our door!
These can be interpreted as the gifts of the universe to each of us, for we are all her children. Her gifts to us are like gifts we dreamed we gave her, in this dream we call life, because we are ALP also: I think here of Carl Sagan’s idea that humans are the cosmos’ way of knowing itself; in the same way, we are the cosmos’ way of giving itself gifts. Our experience is a long series of gifts.
Continue readingOn the Limit(lessness) of Storytelling
In my last post, I discussed how our storytelling about ourselves, others, and the world should be constrained by the facts of reality. In this post, I explore the value of more fictionalized storytelling, creating narratives that are less bound by the facts of reality but that are no less in touch with creative archetypes.
Continue readingThe Mookse and the Gripes, Part 3
This post follows up on Part 1 and Part 2 by reflecting on references to the fable in other parts of Finnegans Wake.
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The Suspended Sentence 