Editing Finnegans Wake (section)

=== Part II ===
While Part I of ''Finnegans Wake'' deals mostly with the parents HCE and ALP, Part II shifts that focus to their children, Shem, Shaun and Issy.

II.1 opens with a pantomime programme, which outlines, in relatively clear language, the identities and attributes of the book's main characters. The chapter then concerns a guessing game among the children, in which Shem is challenged three times to guess by "gazework" the colour which the girls have chosen.<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-224.htm p.224, lines 22,26] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081209105615/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-224.htm |date=9 December 2008 }}. According to Joyce, the piece was based on a children's game called "Angels and Devils" or "Colours," in which one child ("the devil", here played by Shem, or Nick) is supposed to guess a colour that has been chosen by the others ("the angels", here played by the girls). Joyce, ''Letters'', I, p.295</ref> Unable to answer due to his poor eyesight, Shem goes into exile in disgrace, and Shaun wins the affection of the girls. Finally, HCE emerges from the pub and in a thunder-like voice calls the children inside.<ref>Tindall 1969, pp. 153–170</ref>

Chapter II.2 follows Shem, Shaun and Issy studying upstairs in the pub, after having been called inside in the previous chapter.<ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-282.htm pp. 282, line 5 – p.304, line 4] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090121183147/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-282.htm |date=21 January 2009 }}</ref><ref>Finnegans Wake II.2§8 (282.05–304.04), the main narrative of which is known critically as "The Triangle" and which Joyce referred to in letters as "Night Lessons", first appeared as "The Triangle" in transition 11 in February 1928 and then again under the newer title "The Muddest Thick That Was Ever Heard Dump" in ''Tales Told of Shem and Shaun'', and finally as a book called "Storiella as She is Syung" in 1937 (Paris: Black Sun Press, June 1929). See JJA 52 and 53.</ref> The chapter depicts "[Shem] coaching [Shaun] how to do [[Euclid]] Bk I, 1", structured as "a reproduction of a schoolboys' (and schoolgirls') old classbook complete with [[marginalia]] by the twins, who change sides at half time, and footnotes by the girl (who doesn't)".<ref>Joyce, ''Letters I'', p. 242</ref><ref>Joyce, ''Letters I'', p405–6</ref> Once Shem (here called Dolph) has helped Shaun (here called Kev) to draw the [[Pythagorean theorem#Euclid's proof|Euclid diagram]], the latter realises that he has drawn a diagram of ALP's genitalia, and "Kev finally realises the significance of the triangles [..and..] strikes Dolph." After this "Dolph forgives Kev" and the children are given "[e]ssay assignments on 52 famous men."<ref>Benstock 1965, pp. xx–xxi</ref> The chapter ends with the children's "nightletter" to HCE and ALP, in which they are "apparently united in a desire to overcome their parents."<ref>Fordham, Finn ''Lots of Fun at Finnegans Wake'', [https://books.google.com/books?id=cXqhNJgDbGYC&pg=PA84 p. 242]</ref>

{{quote box|width=23em|'''Section 1:''' a radio broadcast of the tale of Pukkelsen (a hunchbacked Norwegian Captain), Kersse (a tailor) and McCann (a ship's husband) in which the story is told ''inter alia'' of how HCE met and married ALP.

'''Sections 2–3:''' an interruption in which Kate (the cleaning woman) tells HCE that he is wanted upstairs, the door is closed and the tale of Buckley is introduced.

'''Sections 4–5:''' the tale, recounted by Butt and Taff (Shem and Shaun) and beamed over the television, of how Buckley shot the Russian General (HCE)|source= –Danis Rose's overview of the extremely complex chapter 2.3, which he believes takes place in the bar of Earwicker's hotel<ref>Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', p.122</ref>}}
II.3 moves to HCE working in the pub below the studying children. As HCE serves his customers, two narratives are broadcast via the bar's radio and television sets, namely "The Norwegian Captain and the Tailor's Daughter",<ref>Joyce called the Norwegian Captain's story a "wordspiderweb" and referred to it as "perhaps the most complacently absurd thing that I ever did until now{{nbsp}}... It is the story of a Captain{{nbsp}}... and a Dublin tailor which my god-father told me forty years ago, trying to explain the arrival of my Viking in Dublin, his marriage, and a lot of things I don't care to mention here." See, Joyce, ''Letters'', III, p. 422</ref><ref>Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', pp.122–3</ref> and "How Buckley Shot the Russian General". The first portrays HCE as a Norwegian Captain succumbing to domestication through his marriage to the Tailor's Daughter. The latter, told by Shem and Shaun ciphers Butt and Taff, casts HCE as a Russian general who is shot by Buckley, an Irish soldier in the [[British Army]] during the [[Crimean War]].<ref>Tindall 1969, p.187</ref> Earwicker has been absent throughout the latter tale, having been summoned upstairs by ALP. He returns and is reviled by his customers, who see Buckley's shooting of the General as symbolic of Shem and Shaun's supplanting their father.<ref>Bishop, John; ''Introduction'' to Penguin's 1999 edition of ''Finnegans Wake'', pp. xxii–xxiii</ref> This condemnation of his character forces HCE to deliver a general confession of his crimes, including an incestuous desire for young girls.<ref>Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', p.129</ref><ref>Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-361.htm p. 361, line 36 – p.363, line 16] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100330082319/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-361.htm |date=30 March 2010 }}</ref><ref>Burgess, ''A Shorter Finnegans Wake'', p.166</ref><ref>Tindall 1969, pp. 202–203</ref> Finally a policeman arrives to send the drunken customers home, the pub is closed up,<ref>cf the section starting "Shatten up ship"; Joyce 1939, [https://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-376.htm p. 376, line 30 – p.371, line 5] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100402101701/http://www.trentu.ca/faculty/jjoyce/fw-376.htm |date=2 April 2010 }}</ref> and the customers disappear singing into the night as a drunken HCE, clearing up the bar and swallowing the dregs of the glasses left behind, morphs into ancient Irish high king Rory O'Connor, and passes out.<ref>Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', p. 131</ref><ref>Tindall 1969, p.205</ref>

II.4, portraying the drunken and sleeping Earwicker's dream, chronicles the spying of four old men (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) on [[Tristan and Iseult]]'s journey.<ref>The chapter is a composite of two shorter pieces called "Mamalujo" and "Tristan and Isolde", which Joyce had written as early as 1923. See Rose, ''The Textual Diaries of James Joyce'', p.131</ref> The short chapter portrays "an old man like [[King Mark]] being rejected and abandoned by young lovers who sail off into a future without him",<ref>Bishop, ''Introduction'', p. xxiii</ref> while the four old men observe Tristan and Isolde, and offer four intertwining commentaries on the lovers and themselves which are "always repeating themselves".<ref>Tindall 1969, p.210</ref>