About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

29 Rutgers L. Rev. 259 (1975-1976)
The Law at Finnegans Wake

handle is hein.journals/rutlr29 and id is 267 raw text is: THE LAW AT FINNEGANS WAKE* THOMAS COWAN** I. THE JOYCESCAPE John Joyce always said his eldest son James should be a lawyer because the boy speaks better than he writes. The fatherly ambition wasn't to be realized, but, not surprisingly, it left its mark. James Joyce had a life long interest in the law. In fact, he even considered pursuing the profession to support his main work, writing. A few law lectures at University College, Dublin, seem to have convinced him, however, that a jealous mistress would not advance his career in literature. While Joyce thought he could do without the law, the law showed no inclination to reciprocate. His first novel Dubliners was destined for a long and acrimonious struggle with publishers who feared the law of criminal libel.' Moreover, when James Joyce and Nora Barnacle decided in 1904 to marry themselves without benefit of church or state, the Joyces literally began a career in legal irregularity that was to last for over a quarter of a century. To be sure, these practical concerns assail many people who nonethe- less show no intellectual interest in the law itself. Not so Joyce. Sometime between 1909 and 1914 (I have not been able to pinpoint the date any closer) Joyce prepared for his own use a complete digest of the common law of commercial transactions.2 * Part of the substance of this paper was reported to the IV James Joyce Sym- posium held in Dublin on June 11-16, 1973. See Appendix for a brief guide to literature helpful to the reading of the Wake. Numerals here refer to pages and lines of the Wake, all printings of which retain the original pagination. ** Professor Emeritus, Rutgers Law School, Newark, New Jersey; B.S., Economics, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; Ph.D., LL.B., University of Pennsylvania; S.J.D., Harvard. 1. For the best sources for this and other details of Joyce's life, see R. ELLMANN, JAMES JOYCE (1965); 1-3 LETrERs OF JAMES JOYCE (vol. 1, S. Gilbert, ed. 1957; vols. 2-3, R. Ellmann, ed. 1966). 2. This extraordinary document which has never been published is now in the Joyce Collection at Cornell University. It consists of 135 pages of notes in Joyce's small but precise handwriting. Page 35 is missing and an unnumbered page appears after page 84. The leading page is labeled Banking and the first nineteen pages are explicitly on the law of banking as of the first decade of the century. But there is much more. Pages 20 to 45 are labeled Commercial Law and are a rather full tight student's outline of the English common law of contracts. Pages 46 to 62 con- tain notes on English law and custom of clerk hire. Pages 63 to 85 labeled Insurance are a concise summary of the English Workmen's Compensation Act of 1906, followed abruptly by a desultory account of other forms of insurance. The next section, pages 86 to 110, is called Shipping. It is an extended glossary of English terms and usages

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most