N VIEW OF James Joyce's lifelong devotion to the works of Henrik Ibsen, it would be strange indeed if we did not find the dramas of Ibsen playing some role in Finnegans Wake, which is, in good part, a chronicle of Joyce's life and thought. Nor is this expectation disappointed, for at least one of Ibsen's plays, The Master Btilder (Bygmester Solness), is of such central importance in the vast amalgam of imagery which makes up Finnegans Wake that some knowledge of it is almost mandatory even for the casual reader (if there be such). Other plays of Ibsen's, while of lesser importance, can also furnish us points of orientation in the maze. As we get our first extended look at the elusive Finnegan, Joyce formally introduces him as Bygmester Finnegan, of the Stuttering Hand (4/18),1 drawing an immediate parallel with the hero of Ibsen's play, a parallel which is echoed throughout the book. Solness, like Finnegan, is threatened with displacement by a rising younger generation. In Solness' case, this threat takes the form of a young architect, Ragnar Brovik, who in Finnegans Wake is analogous to Shem and Shaun, the father-displacing figures. He appears by name, perhaps, in some of the references to Ragnar Lodbrok, the Viking chieftain (89/17, 169/16, 313/15, 360/17) or, more likely and more ominously, in the references to Ragnarok, the doom of the Norse godsragnar rocks (19/4), Rocknarrag (221/23). Almost the entire story of the unhappy master builder can be found in Finnegans Wake. Solness' destruction, as he fears, comes from the younger generation, but from an unexpected direction. A mysterious