The Encryption of Finnegans Wake Resolved: W. T. Stead

At risk of life and reputation, the reform journalist W. T. Stead (1849-1912) exposed child vice and white slavery in London and established age 16 for statutory rape. Concluding the 1914 Portrait, Joyce saluted the “Old father, old artificer, stand me now and ever in good stead” and set the path of future works. The exemplary life and devotions of Stead provided James Joyce with a model, a theme, and a purpose. Joyce integrated Steadfacts with his own personal emerging autobiography and interpretation of the ongoing Irish national, international, and even cosmic events. In this book Eckley uses new sources to unravel forgotten languages, motifs, and metaphors and recognizes “obscurity” as a “chrysalis factor” in Joyce’s Finnegans Wake to illuminate Stead’s influence on Joyce. This book of Finnegans Wake criticism will open paths for exciting new efforts in studying Joyce.

Table of Contents:
List of Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgements Chapter One: The Stead Source and the Critical Dilemma Chapter Two: The Predication of the Portrait’s “Good Man Stead” Chapter Three: The Strategy of the Encrypted Name Chapter Four: The Thunder of Stead’s Scandalous Maiden Tribute Chapter Five: The Park Maid and the Sinister Sir Chapter Six: Who Was the Hen and Whose the Letters Chapter Seven: Light and Science in the “Dark Night of the Soul” Chapter Eight: Maamtrasna Retrial Defends the Joyce Family Name Chapter Nine: The Brunonian “Hiresiarch” and the Russian general (Sic) Chapter Ten: Timing and Terrain of the Snake and the Whale Chapter Eleven: The Encrypted Hero of Finnegans Wake References

About the Author :
Grace Eckley in the 1980s retired from teaching to devote full time to research writing. After more than twenty years in beloved Colorado, she returned to family in Des Moines, Iowa, and now profits from their many contributions to research efforts.

Review :
Students of late Victorian Britain, which then included Ireland, have long seen W. T. Stead, both as a colourful journalist and a leading public figure, as one of the most influential opinion makers of his era. Grace Eckley, in her indefatigable researches into the allusional depths of Finnegans Wake, shows that for James Joyce's parallel universe W. T. Stead was equally important. She demonstrates that far from being a mere phantasmagoria, the text is deeply rooted in the mental and moral atmosphere of its times, and that Stead plays there as great a role as he did in the real world. She demonstrates too not just the value of close reading, but also of ever-deeper researches into what Joyce, like so many millions, actually read and absorbed, and how so many almost forgotten events form an integral part of his imaginative world.