“Our eyes demand their turn”: The Materiality of the Joycean Image and Illustrations of Finnegans Wake

This paper explores illustrations of Finnegans Wake as artworks in dialogue with Joyce’s conception of the materiality of textual objects through works that bring to light Joyce’s emphasis on the visuality of text, typography, and the physical dimensions of the novel. Through the inclusion of the Wake’s typographical elements, illustrators promote the Wake’s position as a hybrid of image and text. In John Vernon Lord’s illustrated edition of the Wake (2014) the employment of mixed techniques, extensive layering, and transgression of natural borders, directly corresponds to Joyce’s experimentations with structure, font, and page layout; techniques through which the text becomes palpable in the physical space of the reader. Thomas McNally’s illustrated Wake fables The Ondt & the Gracehoper (2014) and The Mookse and the Gripes (2018) similarly include the physical properties of the book in their network of meaning. With text and image shifting from distinctly separate features to increasingly experimental forms, McNally calls attention to the act of seeing, directing our perception towards materiality. Visual artists illustrating the Wake continue Joyce’s legacy in redefining the boundaries of their medium, insisting on the status of the artwork as an object.