A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake
Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton RobinsonIn 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first "key" or guide to entering the fascinating, disturbing, marvelously rich world of Finnegan's Wake.
The authors break down Joyce's "unintelligible" book page by page, stripping the text of much of its obscurity and serving up thoughtful interpretations via footnotes and bracketed commentary.
A Skeleton Key was Campbell's first book, published five years before he wrote his breakthrough Hero with a Thousand Faces.
The work gives both a general critical overview of Finnegan's Wake and a detailed exegetical outline of the text. According to Campbell and Robinson, Finnegan's Wake is best interpreted in light of Giambattista Vico's philosophy, which holds that history proceeds in cycles and fails to achieve meaningful progress over time.