Inter-literary Synthesis: Reconciling the Fisher King Myth with the Ouroboros Structure in the Cyclical Narrative Poetics of James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”

This doctoral thesis proposes a pioneering critical framework for understanding Joyce’s final work. It argues that “Finnegans Wake” constitutes a profound narrative synthesis, weaving the linear, pathological archetype of the wounded Fisher-King into the recursive, regenerating structure of the Ouroboros. This fusion creates the text’s essential dynamic: a poetics where thematic stasis (guilt, fall, sterility) is perpetually encased within and animated by formal cycles of eternal return.The investigation establishes this synthesis through an interdisciplinary, comparative methodology. It first re-contextualises both mythic structures, tracing the Fisher-King from its Arthurian origins into the heart of modernist anxiety, and theorising the Ouroboros not merely as a symbol but as an operative narrative principle. Crucially, this study roots Joyce’s cyclical mechanics in specific Celtic and Scandinavian mythic traditions: from the regenerative cauldrons of the “Mabinogion” to the self-engulfing destiny of the Norse World Serpent, Jörmungandr – positioning the “Wake” within a distinct Northern European cosmogony of fate and renewal.At the core of the work is the figure of Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker (HCE), interpreted as the modern Fisher-King whose unspecified wound casts a shadow of guilt and infertility over the textual landscape. This wound, however, becomes the engine of the Ouroboric narrative. The thesis offers an original hermeneutic key by deciphering the HCE sigil as a mathematical emblem of castration and recursive identity, a symbol where differentiation and integration collapse into a single, wounded constant. The personal and textual converge most powerfully in the figure of Lucia Joyce, whose biographical trajectory (encompassing aborted artistry, institutionalisation, and silenced voice) is analysed as the tragic, embodied nexus where the Fisher-King’s sterile wound and the Ouroboros’ relentless cycle meet. Her unwritten gift acts as both a shadow-text and a generative void, demanding participatory ‘healing’ from the reader.The validity of this synthesised model is demonstrated through extensive intertextual and comparative analysis. The study presents a groundbreaking reading of Vladimir Nabokov’s “Ada, or Ardor” as a crucial “Wake” analogue, identifying the character Lucette (a reference to Lucia Joyce) as a direct Fisher-King sacrifice within a perverse, incestuous Grail quest. It further traces the Ouroboric motif to ancient antecedents, such as the elusive, unnamed flower in the “Epic of Gilgamesh,” and situates Joyce’s project within a broader contemporary mythopoeic tradition. The polyglot, labyrinthine language of the “Wake” itself is examined as the flesh of this synthesis – a Tower of Babel reborn as Ouroboros, where the confluence of multiple linguistic and literary flows (English, Irish, Norwegian, Ukrainian) enacts the very cyclical collapse and rebirth it describes.Ultimately, this thesis contends that “Finnegans Wake” is an inter-literary monument of reconciliation. By forging the Fisher-King’s tragic linearity within the Ouroboros’ eternal circle, Joyce creates a work where ruin is inherently seminal. The text does not offer a cure for the wound but transforms it into the very principle of narrative regeneration, implicating the reader in an endless process where every ending is a contaminated beginning, and every silence a potential for speech.