Book III

Abstract

This chapter envisions the Wake as part of the tradition of dream vision literature. Beginning with the first critical writing on the Wake that sought to contextualize the book as such, and reassessing more contemporary views that the Wake is not part of the genre, the chapter lays out the tradition from the origins of English poetry and demonstrates Joyce’s adaptation and conformity with it. Part of the chapter engages Giordano Bruno’s extensive writings on dreaming and sight. The chapter takes into consideration the end result of dreaming—awakening—and situates the Wake as an aubade as well as an example of dream vision. In so doing it connects Joyce’s work to possible sources of inspiration, such as Gerard Manley Hopkins, John Bishop, Geoffrey Chaucer, The Dream of the Rood, and Richard Rolle, and looks into the criticism of Derek Attridge, Edmund Wilson, and John Bishop.