Semiotic Perturbations: What The Frog's Eye Tells Us About Finnegans Wake

Finnegans Wake presents a semiotic dilemma for the reader: How is it that the Wake means anything? And, Why doesn't it mean everything? To gesture, somewhat metonymically, toward the Wake itself: It is told in sounds in utter that, in signs so adds to, in universal, in polygluttural, in each auxiliary neutral idiom, sordomutics, florilingua, sheltafocal, flayflutter, a con's cubane, a pro's tutute, strassarab, ereperse and anythongue athall. [FW 117.12-16] As such, Finnegans Wake lays bare the dilemma of semiotics in general: that is, the problem of signification and indeterminacy of meaning.