Hayman claims the early decision of a wake-setting on the basis of the following notes from VI.B. 3: "wake story" (VIB 3: 101); "Is[olde] dream of last day / vision of T[ristan] / Setting--a wake? / !" (VIB 3: 131). These notes were made approximately eight months before Joyce had announced the contest to guess the name of the work in progress (Hayman 1990, 131).
Danis Rose has challenged the prevailing wisdom of Finnegans Wake being chosen as a title for the Work in Progress at such an early stage, and has claimed that at least until 1927--and possibly not until 1937--Joyce had preferred the title Finn's Hotel. This argument is made in two places (Rose 1989, Rose 1995), and the discrepancies between these arguments is worth investigating. Rose's argument has several distinct aspects which while not unrelated are not necessarily related in the way he claims. The broad outline of Rose's hypothesis is not explicitly made but can be inferred:
1: Late 1922-late 1923: Joyce begins writing the vignettes, which are to form the basis for a work entitled Finn's Hotel, which as then conceived is quite different from Finnegans Wake. In this general form this hypothesis is actually not that different from Hayman's outline in The "Wake" in Transit; i.e. whatever plan Joyce had during this early stage was not necessarily that of Finnegans Wake. What Rose insists on is a cleavage between this early work and that this early work was to have been called Finn's Hotel.
2: Late 1923-early 1924: in the notebook elaborations and preparations for Finn's Hotel, the early plan is gradually discarded and Finnegans Wake is born, even if it is still to be called Finn's Hotel. Rose calls VI. B.11 (Sep-late Nov 23) the first Finnegans Wake notebook. Again in general this is not that distinct from Hayman: elaborations of the Pop incest crime evolve into HCE and the whole cast of Wakean characters. Again what Rose has done is claim that this elaboration/evolution came out of a separate work which was then discarded and that that work was to have been called Finn's Hotel. These are two distinct claims: the fact that Joyce might have been planning a separate, earlier work does not necessarily mean that that work was to have been called Finn's Hotel, and conversely any evidence for Finn's Hotel as an early title does not mean that any work done under that title was to have been different from Finnegans Wake.
3: By mid 26 Finnegans Wake is cemented and any vestiges of the original Finn's Hote; project have "gone the way of the Danes." The writing of VI.B.15 and Chapter I.1 established Finnegans Wake once and for all (Rose 1995, 94-100).
Rose writes of Harriet Shaw Weaver sending Joyce the "request" to write "one full length grave account of his esteemed Rhaggrick O'Hoggnor's Hogg Tomb as per photos enclosed" (October 1, 1926; Ellmann 582): "She enclosed photographs of a giant's grave located at saint Andrews at Penrith. J was electrified: here exactly was what he needed to give spin to his work in progress: the notion of HCE as a (sleeping) giant interred in the landscape and, beyond that, of a man assumed dead but sleeping. Even better, again, he now had the notion of resurrection to play with and, with it, the notions of replacement of the old ny the new and cyclicity (Fin, again). He culd even describe the usurpation of Roderick O'Conor et al (from Finn's hotel) by H.C. Earwicker with his wife and children in tow (in Finnegans Wake). Everything hing together on the fulcrum of one word: Finn. And with MacCool came the ballad-hall Tim Finnegan with his hod...." (Rose, 95).
This date for the establishment of Finnegans Wake is earlier than the claim made in the "Name of the Book" article where he claims that Finnegans Wake as a title could not have existed before 1927, and might not have existed until as late as 1937. Indeed there Rose claims that the intoduction of elements from the "Finnegan's Wake" song in 1926 in the draft of I.1 is purely coincidental (Rose 1989, 47-48). This modification has some major consequences for the Finn's Hotel argument which are not addressed in the Textual Diaries.
The problem is that in the earlier article Rose compiles a good deal of notebook evidence (or suggestions) for Finn's Hotel as a title that postdate 1926 (which is why he there can claim that Finnegans Wake was not decided on as a title until quite late). If, as he now admits, that Finn's Hotel had been discarded as a title by mid 1926, how telling can the post 1926 Finn's Hotel notebook entries be? Furthermore, if Finn's Hotel came up in the notebooks after 1926 even though it was not indicative of the title, then how might not the pre 1926 Finn's Hotel references also not indicate the title. In other words, by modifying the dates Rose has substantially weakened his earlier claims and he has offered no new evidence to circumvent this problem. In any case it seems that pace Rose 1989 but selon Rose 1995 and Hayman 1990, the wake setting had been established by 1926 during the composition of VI.B. 15 and I.1 (if not earlier).