Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• O'Callaghan, Katherine

Titel

The Riddle of the Brocken Spectre: Reading "Finnegans Wake" on the Top of Croagh Patrick

Ist Teil von

• James Joyce quarterly, 2019, Vol.56 (1/2), p.133-153

Ort / Verlag

Tulsa: University of Tulsa

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Quelle

Project MUSE: Universal journals

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• In James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, the Dublin Bay region is mirrored by a westerly shadowland or "Echoland!" (FW 13.05): Croagh Patrick and the surrounding Clew Bay area in County Mayo on the west coast of Ireland. Howth Head finds its uncanny other in the legendary mountain Croagh Patrick, the "peatrick" (FW 3.10). Alluding repeatedly to the mountain and its significance in Irish folklore, history, religion, and mythology, Joyce draws on Croagh Patrick's otherworldliness, a place of mystery, upheaval, and banishment. Echoing his treatment of Howth Castle and environs, Joyce amalgamates a mountain, Croagh Patrick, and the imprint of human presence upon it, with a key figure, St. Patrick. Croagh Patrick and the legend of St. Patrick encountering a revenant from pre-Christian Ireland provide Joyce with cultural, geographic, and topographic coincidences, allowing him to link a particular Irish clash of civilizations with a universal pattern of conflict and usurpation. Joyce creates resonances between the cultural and mythological associations of Croagh Patrick and those of both the oracle at Delphi and the Brocken Mountain in Germany. The Brocken Mountain is the site at which the appearance of a haunting, elongated ghostly shadow, thought to be responsible for the creation of many myths, legends, and religious visions from around the globe, was first named. This meteorological phenomenon, known as a "Brocken Spectre," can also be spotted on Croagh Patrick. Uncovering the role of the Brocken Spectre in Finnegans Wake, for the first time, significantly expands our understanding of the riddles of the "chaosmos" (FW 118.21), which Joyce uses to underpin the text. In particular, the climactic comic-epic showdown between St. Patrick and the Pagan Archdruid in the final chapter of the Wake is greatly illuminated if we understand this archetypal confrontation to occur, in one of its palimpsestic layers, during an appearance of the Brocken Spectre.