Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.
A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake  By  cover art

A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake

By: Joseph Campbell, Henry Morton Robinson, Edmund L. Epstein - editor
Narrated by: Arthur Morey
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $25.00

Buy for $25.00

Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.

Publisher's summary

Countless would-be readers and listeners of Finnegans Wake - James Joyce's 1939 masterwork, on which he labored for a third of his life - have given up after a few pages and "dismissed the book as a perverse triumph of the unintelligible." In 1944, a young professor of mythology and literature named Joseph Campbell, working with novelist and poet Henry Morton Robinson, wrote the first guide to understanding the fascinating world of Finnegans Wake. Page by page, chapter by chapter, A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake outlines the basic action of Joyce's book, simplifies and clarifies the complex web of images and allusions, and provides an understandable, continuous narrative from which the listener can venture out on his or her own. This edition includes a foreword and updates by Joyce scholar Dr. Edmund L. Epstein that add the context of sixty subsequent years of scholarship.

©1944, 1961 1944, 1961 by Joseph Campbell and Henry Morton Robinson, © 2005 by the Joseph Campbell Foundation. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

What listeners say about A Skeleton Key to Finnegans Wake

Average customer ratings
Overall
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    18
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    3
  • 2 Stars
    1
  • 1 Stars
    1
Performance
  • 5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    19
  • 4 Stars
    2
  • 3 Stars
    0
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    0
Story
  • 4.5 out of 5 stars
  • 5 Stars
    15
  • 4 Stars
    3
  • 3 Stars
    1
  • 2 Stars
    0
  • 1 Stars
    1

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

Sort by:
Filter by:
  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Essential reading

Finnigan’s Wake was probably the most confusing book I’ve ever attempted to read. Joseph Campbell’s interpretations & illuminations make me want to give it another try

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.

You voted on this review!

You reported this review!

5 people found this helpful