In the first full-length study of Joyce's direct and indirect use of alchemical allusions, DiBernard shows how an awareness of the alchemical metaphor guides a reader through the richness of Finnegans Wake. For example, the alchemical transmutation of lead into gold parallels the transmutation of the dross and commotion of ordinary life into a work of art. This study shows how the themes of Joyce's novel—death and rebirth, the conflict between physical and spiritual, incest, colors, forgery, and the reconciliation of opposites—relate to the alchemical process. The author then presents a theory, based on alchemical metaphor, on the much debated subject of Joyce's view of the artist.

In the first full-length study of Joyce's direct and indirect use of alchemical allusions, DiBernard shows how an awareness of the alchemical metaphor guides a reader through the richness of Finnegans Wake. For example, the alchemical transmutation of lead into gold parallels the transmutation of the dross and commotion of ordinary life into a work of art. This study shows how the themes of Joyce's novel--death and rebirth, the conflict between physical and spiritual, incest, colors, forgery, and the reconciliation of opposites--relate to the alchemical process. The author then presents a theory, based on alchemical metaphor, on the much debated subject of Joyce's view of the artist.

Since its publication in 1939, countless would-be readers of "Finnegans Wake" - James Joyce's masterwork, which consumed a third of his life - have given up after a few pages, dismissing it as a "perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 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 "Finnegans 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. They outline the book's basic action, and then simplify -- and clarify -- its complex web of images and allusions. "A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake" is the latest addition to the "Collected Works of Joseph Campbell" series.

In Chapelizod, a suburb of Dublin, an innkeeper and his family are sleeping. Around them and their dreams there swirls a vortex of world history, of ambition and failure, desire and transgression, pride and shame, rivalry and conflict, gossip and mystery.

Finnegans Wake has been the target of peripheral investigation for more than forty years, starting with early studies of this novel as a "work in progress." Just now, however, are studies beginning to appear in which the book's basic plot and theme are closely examined. Of these new studies, there is no doubt that Margaret C. Solomon's close examination of the sexual universe created here by Joyce will prove especially illumi­nating to both scholars and general readers. In closely reasoned and richly detailed chapters in the three major parts of her book Mrs. Solomon examines indi­vidually the enigmatic figures, reveals the meanings of the passages or chapters which they have made hitherto obscure, and weaves them together to form a distinct pattern of sexual analogies. In Part 3, perhaps the most significant for future students of Joyce, the author, supported by the discoveries of the first two parts, examines the number-symbolism that obviously and enigmatically pervades the Wake. Her final chapter, "The Coach with the Sex Insides," which brings to a climax her brilliant description of Joyce's sexual universe, examines the dreamer, Yawn, and the image of the bridal ship of Tristan and Isolde and reveals man-as-universe in the shape of a tesseract, a geometrical figure realizable only in a four-dimensional continuum.

Essays on Irish theatre in the second half of the twentieth century

The wisdom contained in this book is not derived via the usual methods of scholarly and historical research, and neither is it based on theory or speculation. Rudolf Steiner acquired his original contribution to human knowledge from metaphysical dimensions of reality which are hidden to most people – but visible to anybody who is prepared to develop spiritual means of perception. With his philosophical and scientific training, Steiner brought a new systematic discipline to the field of spiritual research, allowing for fully conscious methods and comprehensive results. A natural seer, he cultivated his spiritual vision to a high degree, enabling him to speak with authority on previously veiled mysteries. Samples of his work are to be found in this book of edited texts, which brings together excerpts from his many talks and writings on the subject of Alchemy. This volume also features an editorial introduction, commentary and notes by Dr Andrew Welburn. Chapters: Alchemy and the Rise of the Modern Mysteries; The Loss of the Divine and the Alchemical Quest; Mysteries of the Metals; The Standpoint of Human Wisdom Today; Alchemy and Consciousness – the Transformation; Alchemy and Archangels; The Alchemy of Nature – Mercury, Sulphur, Salt; Beyond Nature Consciousness – the Spiritual Goal.