Guinness. Just saying the name out loud when you are ordering it at a bar or pub, calls to mind Ireland where it has been brewed now for over 250 years. The relationship between this creamy stout and its country of origin is perhaps best embodied by the company’s famous logo introduced in 1862.(1) An Irish harp, a symbol of the nation since the 13th century, graces the Guinness company trademark as well as the Great Seal of the Republic of Ireland.(2) It’s not surprising then that Guinness is often mentioned in conjunction with another famous Irish figure, James Joyce, especially when the product, the company, and the family all appear in his works. The word “Guinness” itself appears the most frequently in his last work Finnegans Wake: sometimes it signifies a beer in a list of other alcoholic drinks (the protagonist is a pub owner, after all), sometimes it alludes to the brewery itself, an important Dublin landmark, or sometimes it represents the family, which played an important role in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Irish politics. It is even a major component of the topography of HCE, who is described as having a barrel of whiskey at his feet and a barrel of “guenesis” at his head, a word that combines “Guinness” with “genesis,” and thus merges themes of origins and beginnings with images of the dark creamy stout.(3) All of these allusions reference Irishness, as suggested by the company’s insignia. But, when Joyce chooses to combine the word “Guinness” with others to form new words in the Wake, two interesting themes emerge that complicate ideas about the beer’s Irish identity and reveal a lot about the company’s relationship with Great Britain during the late 1920s and 1930s. In this paper, I will explore the variations of the word “Guinness” in Finnegans Wake in conjunction with the history of the Guinness brewing company in the years after the creation of the Irish Free State. I argue that Joyce’s frequent combinations of the word “Guinness” with the word “Genghis,” or “guinea,” are a reaction to, and criticism of, the way Guinness further exposed and strengthened its relationship to England during this time, making it a part of the larger nationalistic and anti-colonial discourse in Joyce’s writings.

In Book I, Chapter I when the four old men, Mamalujo, address the fallen HCE, they urge him to remain “in the land of souls with . . . Nobucketnozzler [Nebuchadnezzar] and the Guinnghis Khan [Genghis Khan].(4) Here Ireland’s first family of beer is associated with the leader of what was considered to be a tribe of barbaric invaders. Historians and archeologists today have presented us with a more complicated vision of Genghis Khan, but scholars during the time Joyce was writing the Wake present him as a homicidal, merciless warrior. Harold Lamb’s book, Genghis Khan, The Emperor of All Men, published in 1927, presents one such vision of how Khan was portrayed by Joyce’s contemporaries: “When he marched with his horde, it was over degrees of latitude and longitude instead of miles; cities in his path were often obliterated, and rivers diverted from the courses; deserts were peopled with the fleeing and dying, and when he had passed, wolves and ravens often were the sole living things in once populous lands.”(5) Lamb’s description here emphasizes Khan’s ability to slaughter innocent people but also annihilate the very structures of civilization, reducing them to a scavenger-infested wasteland.

Another reference to Genghis Khan is found at the beginning of Book IV, when HCE is now called to rise up. His pub will be reopened and has the “highest gratifications in announcing to pewtewr publikumst of pratician pratyusers, genghis is ghoon for you.” (6) Here Guinness stout is directly equated with Genghis. And instead of being “good,” like in the well-known advertising slogan, “,” “Guinness”/“Genghis” is “ghoon” for you. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word “goon” was a popular slang term, originating in America in the 1920s. Life Magazine defined it by saying: “The word ‘Goon’ was first popularized by college students who used it to mean any stupid person. Labor union lingo has given it a second meaning: a tough or thug. Rival unions and factions speak of another's ‘Goon Squads.’”(7) So even in this hopeful invitation for HCE to rise, “Guinness” is “Genghis” and “ghoon,” an idiot or an enforcer. Both of the above references, therefore, work to connect the company with a name that connotes destruction, savagery, and cruelty.

Joyce also puns on Guinness’ famous advertising slogan in the story of Jute and Mutt in Book I, Chapter 1. After a set of failed exchanges, Jute, the invader, tries to “bribe” the indigenous Mutt, referencing the sale of Manhattan from the Native Americans to the Dutch.(8) Jute says, “One eyegonblack. Bisons is bisons. Let me fore all your hasitancy cross your qualm with trink gilt. Here have sylvan coyne, a piece of oak. Ghinees hies good for you.”(9) This spelling modification and the context of the narrative play off the similarities in pronunciation between the word “Guinness” and the word “guinea,” a unit of money in the United Kingdom. A guinea is the equivalent of one pound one shilling and “is the ordinary unit for a professional fee and for a subscription to a society or institution” often the price obtained “for works of art, racehorses, and sometimes landed property.”(10) Since no actual coin existed for this amount and because it was often used to quote the price of luxury goods, this monetary unit is closely associated with the English upper class. In Joyce’s tale of the colonized and the colonizer, Jute urges Mutt to just let things go, let “bygone be bygones” and offers him “trink gilt,” or “a gilt trinket” or “a “trinkgeld,” (the German word for “tip”), along with a “sylvan coyne” or a wooden nickel.(11) He ends his offer by trying to convince Mutt that “Ghineese hies good for you,” that “guineas” (suggested by the pronunciation of “Ghineese” here) the money of the imperialists is “good” for the locals.

The “Guinness” / “Guineas” connection is also evident in Book I, Chapter 5, in the phrase “Allfor Guineas,” one of the many names for ALP’s manifesto.(12) In this title, Joyce bastardizes the founder of the brewery’s name, “Arthur Guinness,” substituting “all for” for Arthur and “guineas” for the last name “Guinness.” This word play suggests that either the founder, or the company itself, is “all for guineas,” all about making a profit or furthering the interests of the British upper class. A comparable set of associations is formed in Book II, Chapter 3 in a phone conversation about nature and fertility.(13) The speaker exalts “And till Arthur comes againus and sen peatrick's he's reformed we'll pose him together a piece, a pace. Shares in guineases!”(14) Once again, “Guinness” is replaced with “guineas,” demonstrating how the company and its revenue are conflated. And with a nod to the English legend of Camelot, the speaker here implies that when Ireland’s king Arthur, Arthur Guinness, comes back from the dead, he’ll present the people shares of the company stock, instead of true salvation—a self-interested, monetary offering. This passage questions the benefits the Guinness company is providing to the Irish population and reminding readers of the family’s loyalty to England, something Joyce would not have forgotten. According to Ellman’s biography, Joyce’s father was the secretary of the United Liberal Club in Dublin, and during one of the elections, the older Joyce was responsible for counting the votes. After a conservative loss John Joyce “had the pleasure of telling” Sir Arthur Guinness (the founder’s son) and his colleague James Stirling “that [they were] no longer club member[s].”(15) This story is commemorated in Finnegans Wake itself in Book II, Chapter II when it’s noted that: “the same Messherrn the grinning statesmen, Brock and Leon, have shunted the grumbling coundedtouts, Starlin and Ser Artur Ghinis.”(16)

Joyce’s use of the word “Guinness,” especially when the name itself undergoes some sort of linguistic change, associates the black stout with two things. Combining the word “Guinness” with the word “Genghis” gives the resulting portmanteau words, like “Guinnghis Khan,” a sinister connotation, insinuating that Guinness is ruthless and destructive. Combining the word “Guinness” with the word “guinea” as in “Ghineese” and “Allfor Guineas,” on the other hand, highlights the company’s drive to turn a profit, implying that it might be using suspect, or even unethical means to do so and ultimately suggesting that Guinness has sacrificed its morals for money. Both variations of the word “Guinness,” therefore, are hypercritical of how Arthur Guinness, Son and Company is conducting itself in the marketplace. Most of these oblique references to “Guinness” in the Wake have another thing in common: the above phrases appear in chapters of the book that were composed and revised around the same period of time. All were started in the early or middle 1920s but had finishing touches added in either 1936 or 1938, directly after St. James’ Gate had gone through several radical transitions in order to revive the stagnant company.

While other nations were reeling from the impact of World War I in the late 1920s and Ireland was working to establish itself as a stable nation state, Arthur Guinness, Son and Co. was similarly facing significant challenges. Sluggish markets, export taxes, changes in consumer lifestyles, and lagging postwar sales lead Guinness board member Ben Newbold to believe that the company’s future rested on its ability to further “tap into” the British beer market. Guinness was being enjoyed on several continents at this point, but Newbold believed that the market with the most potential for growth was England. At this time England had 20 times more beer drinkers than Ireland and persuading them to choose a Guinness when ordering at the pub would more than make up for any money lost to taxes exporting the product.(17) Newbold proceeded to devise a multi-tiered business plan to revitalize interest in the company’s product in England, making Guinness’ future rest on the success of rebuilding its relationship with Ireland’s former colonizer.

Newbold’s first recommendation was to create a new department in the company devoted to nothing but English trade, spearheaded by a “coordinating official,” who would be based in Britain.(18) He also advocated increasing the gravity of Guinness Extra Stout (and thus the alcohol content), making the product more appealing to British and Northern Irish pub goers.(19) Moreover, Newbold believed that Guinness should acquire an existing British bottling business, a move that would strengthen the company’s brand. All Guinness stout was brewed at St. James’ Gate, but not bottled there. Newly-brewed beer was put in wooden casks and shipped all over the world, where it was bottled and even advertised by several local distributors.(20) These businesses often put their own name on the beer label, along side the Guinness trademark, causing people to call the dark Irish stout they were drinking by the name of the bottler, not by the name of its producer. Buying a British bottler, which the company did in 1932, would ensure that some of its beer would be bottled with the Guinness trademark before it was distributed in England or transported to foreign markets, making the company logo all the more recognizable outside of Ireland.(21)

Newbold’s most revolutionary and controversial proposal was that Guinness begin advertising in the United Kingdom. After convincing a reluctant chairman, Edward Cecil Guinness, that advertising was “the quickest and cheapest means of increasing our trade in England,” in 1927 the company hired London-based advertising agency S.H. Benson to create an engaging marketing campaign for its British customers.(22) Benson began with market research in order to discover what made Guinness so popular with its customers, and not surprisingly, “the universal finding was that people said they felt good after a pint of stout,” laying the foundation for the classic Guinness slogan. Starting in 1928 in Scotland and in 1929 in Britain, “Guinness is good for you” advertisements began to appear in the daily papers and on pub posters.(23) The now famous catchphrase was soon paired with artist John Gilroy’s cartoons. Some of the company’s most beloved spokesanimals and spokespeople were created by Gilroy for this campaign in the 1930s, when new variations on the “Guinness is Good for You” theme were added: “Guinness for Strength” and “My Goodness, My Guinness.”

Gilroy’s Guinness advertisements—which are still in pubs, bars, and restaurants and serve to symbolize Ireland for many people—were not created for an Irish audience. They were created for a British one. In fact, none of these well known Guinness ads didn’t appear in Ireland until the latter half of the twentieth century, since Guinness didn’t begin a large-scale advertising campaign directed to the Irish market until the 200-year anniversary of the brewery’s founding.(24) In the words of Guinness archivist Eibhlin Roche, “You would not have had billboards or posters with the toucan or the other Gilroy circus animals as there were in the United Kingdom. Press advertising, bus signs, and poster advertising didn’t start in Ireland until 1959.” (25) Another less well-known series of ads that parodied scenes and characters from the English children’s novels Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass further demonstrate how Guinness’ marketing strategies were aimed largely at a British consumer base.

Just as Newbold had predicted, “Guinness was good for you,” was good for business. Guinness was able to capture 5.5 percent of the British drinking market through 1931, up from 4.8 percent.(26) And with the beginning of the global depression in the 1930’s, hardly any companies were producing significant earnings, but Guinness sales were up from previous years. Headlines in the Irish Times like “Success of English Advertising Campaign” and “The Value of Advertising” attributed the company’s profits to its marketing, while simultaneously broadcasting the company’s business plan. Even the new Lord Iveagh, Rupert Guinness, noted in an annual general meeting that the company was “contented” with the “result” of the English advertising campaign.(27)

What Joyce called “the wine of the country” was becoming so popular in England that in 1936 Guinness opened the Park Royal Brewery outside of London, despite the possibility of backlash from the Irish public and the negative influence it would have on the Irish economy.(28) According to The London Times’ article,“Guinness Branch for England,” “the mere suggestion that part of [Guinness’] trade is about to be transferred to England has come as a shock to [the Free State],” depicting the startled public’s reaction to the news.(29) The same article also gives a detailed explanation of the company’s financial contributions to the national Irish economy: “[Guinness] is by far the biggest industry in the 26 counties and has paid as much as ₤16,000,000 in Government duty in a single year. . . . Furthermore the firm is a model employer and pays more than union rates. If, therefore, any substantial portion of its business should be withdrawn from Dublin, a very heavy blow would be dealt at the Irish Free State.”(30) These statistics show that Guinness was not only the biggest manufacturer in a largely agrarian country, but it was one that strove to take care of its employees, thus the loss of jobs at the well-paying brewery would affect other business and industries—and eventually the entire country. With the gradual transfer of Guinness’ business to Park Royal, the ultimate result of Ben Newbold’s business plan was that the identity of the Guinness company underwent a transformation in the mid-1930s; in the words of Bill Yenne, author of Guinness, The 250 Year Quest for the Perfect Pint, “Despite its early origins, Guinness was as much a British beer as it was Irish.” (31)

Guinness’ alliance with Great Britain was not particularly new. Unlike most of its workforce, the Guinness family was Protestant and members of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. In the nineteenth century, England was the beer’s largest importer, and the black stuff was enjoyed by some of the most famous members of Victorian English society: Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli commented on the Guinness and oysters he enjoyed at the Carlton Hotel in a 1837 letter; Charles Dickens wrote about the Irish stout in Sketches by Boz; and Guinness was made available and enjoyed by officers all over the Empire.(32) What made this moment in the company’s history so unique is that the company and the product itself was now tied to Britain, that Guinness chose to rely on this specific market for its survival and growth, and that this newer, stronger relationship between Guinness and Britain would have been exposed to the public via the media. This meant that Irish readers, like Joyce, would have been painfully aware of the changes taking place at St. James Gate. In addition, Joyce visited England in the summers of 1929, 1930, and 1931, during the height of the “Guinness is good for you campaign,” and witnessed first hand the new English advertising strategy for the Irish stout. We know he was aware of the ubiquitous Guinness ads because during that time, he actually submitted his own slogan to Guinness hoping it would become Benson’s successor. Not surprisingly Joyce’s tagline, the awkward and awful “The free, the flow, the frothy freshner” was never accepted by the company.(33)

Joyce’s linguistic corruption of the word “Guinness” in Finnegans Wake, then, is a commentary on how the Guinness company and its product’s identity are changing from Irish to British and a critique of the company’s plans to further and aggressively develop the English market in order to increase its limping sales. Joyce’s play on the words “Genghis” and “Guinness” draws parallels between the infamous invader and the biggest company in Ireland, suggesting that the family and company are actually ruthless, destructive, and tyrannical. What’s “good” for them makes them “goons” or thugs to others. And the interchanging of the similar sounding words, implies “Guinea”/“Guinness” is all about money. Guinness has “sold out,” because of this increased alliance with imperialistic Great Britain, abandoning their ethics and their heritage for an increase in dividends. They have become “Allfor Guineas.” The word “Guinness” in these contexts then isn’t a reference to Ireland; it is a reminder of Guinness’ renewed and more visible relationship with Great Britain, ultimately critiquing the way businesses can support colonial power structures. Joyce would have been very familiar with this topic since he already examined the relationship between capitalism and nationalism in some of his Triestine political lectures and essays.

In 1907, Joyce was asked to contribute some articles on Irish politics for the nationalist paper, Il Piccolo della Sera and one of the pieces he composed for these Italian readers was titled “Fenianism: The Last Fenian,” which described the last years of John O’Leary and how the Fenian movement he helped found was eventually transforming into “ourselves alone” or Sinn Fein.(34) Joyce writes:

. . . [Sinn Fein has] established a direct ferry link between Ireland and France. They boycott English goods, they refuse to become soldiers or swear an oath of alliance to the British crown. They are attempting to develop the industry of the whole country and, rather than fork out one and a quarter millions each year to maintain the eighty deputies in the English parliament, they want to institute a consular service in the principal world ports with the aim of merchandising industrial produce, without the intervention of England. From many points of view, this latest form of Fenianism may be the most formidable. (35)

By discussing Sinn Fein’s goals to make Ireland more internationally connected, to develop Ireland’s ability to produce products, and to export these goods without Britain’s collaboration, Joyce endorses the new direction this party had taken as it focused on nonviolent and financial initiatives. The comparisons drawn between the ruthless and barbaric “Genghis,” the British monetary unit of “guineas,” and the company of Guinness in the Wake stand in stark contrast to the goals of Sinn Fein that Joyce found so “formidable.” Instead of developing industry in Ireland, by building another brewery (or even a bottling company there) Guinness expanded England’s crucial manufacturing sector. And instead of forging independent connections with other countries, an idea implicit in the “direct ferry link between Ireland and France,” Guinness strengthened its bonds with the imperialist United Kingdom, resurrecting colonial hierarchies, because, as the largest brewery in the world and one of the largest businesses in Ireland, their financial reliance on England ultimately encourages Ireland as a whole to be more economically dependent on England. Joyce’s critique of Guinness’s business relationship with the United Kingdom in Finnegans Wake, found in his portmanteau words and linguistic games, stems from his original support of non-violent and economic sanctions to achieve political purposes, extends his specific ideas about independence and economics in his early writings to the project of nation building, and contributes to the more general, complicated nationalistic and anti-imperial discourse in his fictional works.

In addition, the variations of the word “Guinness” put Joyce in conversation with contemporary debates about the Irish Free State’s economic relationship with the United Kingdom. Some, like the Irish government lead by Eamon De Valera and his Fianna Fáil party (the successor to Sinn Fein), believed that Ireland should move towards economic autonomy. Others believed that the trade channels of goods conventionally exported to England should be strengthened and further developed. By censuring Guinness’s British business plans in the Wake, Joyce enters this national dialogue, and since he believes that economic policy is an important exercise of nationalism, he ultimately supports some of the ideology of the new Irish government.

As Guinness embarked on new advertising campaigns, founded breweries in Africa and Asia, developed technology to improve draft beer, and marketed new products (such as Harp Lager) in the 1950s, 60s, 70s, and 80s, Joyce’s commentary on the company’s British identity, forged by their economic connections to Great Britain in the 1930s, has become even more relevant. Bill Yenne notes “By the 1980s, the identity of Guinness was more and more that of a British, rather than an Irish company. . . . this author observed in conversations in British pubs that many people assumed Guinness to be a British, rather than an Irish product. In a sense they were correct.”(36) But as Guinness PLC began to diversify their product line in the late 1980s and 1990s, their most prominent product, Guinness stout, started to both recognize and capitalize on its Irish heritage, especially in countries that had welcomed large numbers of Irish immigrants. A commercial titled, “Natural Guinness,” shot on location in Ireland, showed the beautiful parts of the countryside where the beer’s ingredients are found, and the black and white “Fractionals” campaign, a spin-off of the popular “Man with the Guinness” TV commercials, used green in their print ads to recognize St. Patrick’s Day.(37) This movement culminated with the “Win Your Own Pub in Ireland” contest that ran for several years, boosting both sales and product awareness.(38) Since then Guinness has continued to promote and benefit from its Irish identity. The Guinness Storehouse is one of the most popular tourist hotspots in Dublin, attracting at least 4 million visitors since it opened in 2000, and recently the exploits and inventions of the animated St. James Gate brewmasters had Americans buying more bottled Guinness and using the word “brilliant” with an alarming frequency.(39) Today Guinness has undergone a “re-guenesis,” re-inventing themselves as an Irish business, even though the word “Guinness” in Finnegans Wake is simultaneously a representation of Irishness and a target of Joyce’s larger commentary on the economic and political relationship between Great Britain and its former colony of Ireland in the 1930s. Regardless of the company’s present image, in Joyce’s eyes Guinness will always have a strong relationship with England—Guinness will always be “goon.”

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