James Joyce`s Finnegans Wake presents us with a number of self-reflexive expressions, for example, "This nonday diary, this allnights newseryreel" (FW 489.35). This means that Finnegans Wake is a work about the nocturnal world, which is also the dream world. So Joyce adopts a different strategy to deal with this nocturnal world. His last work registers the new era of mass media including newspapers, illustrated periodicals, and motion pictures. It problematizes interpretation itself by interrogating a variety of communication modes, thus undermining its complacency. Joyce focuses on the influence of popular discourses on the minds in childhood and explores the visualized pages of popular journalism, in particular, comic strips. His reference to such comic figures as Mutt and Jeff, Ally Sloper, and so forth reveals that his childhood world is populated with these comic characters. The main character of Finnegans Wake, HCE, is also derived from a cartoon image, and his incessant transformations are made possible by the cartoonist imagination. References to various forms of mass media show Joyce`s concern about the influence of popular discourses on the common people. By exploring these modes of communication, Joyce presents the problematics of communication. First of all, he questions the valorization of any sense, whether visual or aural. In addition, communication is not completed when it is interrupted. By using an example of interference in radio, Joyce puts communication into question. In Finnegans Wake, which deals with the dream world, he destabilizes any complacency of identification, thus making any interpretation incomplete. So his interest in mass media corroborates his strategy of problematizing the process of interpretation itself. |