Mick Greer “In the muddle is the soundance”: adapting and performing a section of Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake: perhaps the most difficult book (and one of the most magical!) in the English language. O tell me, what is it? It is “a meandertale”, “a chaosmos”, “a verbivocovisual feast”, that “riverruns” in “one continuous present tense integument slowly unfolded all marryvoising moodmoulded cyclewheeling history”. 

Yet another of the Wake’s attempts to define itself states that “In the muddle is the soundance”. Joyce always argued that his last work became clear when heard. What is, for some, the confusing “chaosmos” of Finnegans Wake is unravelled through the “soundance”. 

This paper charts my work on bringing one of the most studied sections of the Wake – the Prankquean and Jarl van Hoother – to the stage. Listen to the Wake and the “muddle” begins to clear. Perform the Wake and it may be clarified.

The Prankquean episode (FW, 21-23) basically (always rather a tricky word with Finnegans Wake), tells the story of Grace O'Malley, or Granuaile, the Irish Sea Queen and the Christopher St. Lawrence, Earl of Howth.

In 1575, returning from a visit to Queen Elizabeth, Granuaile landed at Howth in the evening and approached the castle. Finding the gates closed, as was the custom when the family dined, she seized the Earl’s young heir, who was by the shore, and carried him prisoner to her own castle in Mayo. He was only released, after much negotiation, on the condition that when the family went to dinner, the castle gates should be left open, and shelter given to any stranger that might arrive. 

To what extent and how exactly does the performance transform the text? When material is brought from one art form to be embodied in another, a tension is created, a tightrope is stretched between the two. The performance moves along this tightrope and it must to be able to bear the weight. I aim to explore how moving the Wakean version of this story from the page to the stage involves, in a sense, enacting plural modernities.

Mick Greer. Studied English Literature at Cambridge University and has taught at the School of Arts and Humanities at Lisbon University (FLUL) since 1992, where he is an Assistant Professor. He holds a PhD on James Joyce and theatre and is a researcher at FLUL’s Centre for Theatre Studies. He works on James Joyce, Contemporary British and Irish Theatre, Translation, Theatre in Education and Shakespeare in Performance. Besides being an active member of the Lisbon Players, a group performing theatre in English, Mick has translated various plays and texts concerned with performance and the arts. He has also published on theatre, translation and literature.