"Joyce's famous claim that he had ‘put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors busy for centuries, arguing over what I meant’ was directed at Ulysses but it surely applies even more to Finnegans Wake. During the past three-quarters of a century, the professors have been busy and Donald Phillip Verene is as industrious and learned as any of them. An internationally-acclaimed expert on Vico, his most recent contribution to Joyce scholarship is both professorial and deeply informative... Joycean readers should welcome what Verene has given us: a wealth of individual insights and a convincing defence of Vico’s many roles in the Wake." —James Joyce Broadsheet 

". . . an excellent book of many turns. There are too many turns, in fact, to give due credit to all the important insights presented in this study within the limited scope of a book review. The text reflects an incredible density of thought, and the reader can only try to summarize the most central aspects of a myriad of carefully interwoven insights presented in this, quantitatively speaking, rather slim booklet . . . a very innovative book that stands out from the crowd of mainstream scholarship." —Dieter Fuchs, James Joyce Quarterly