New Science: Principles of the New Science Concerning the Common Nature of Nations (1725) – Giambattista Vico [Amazon.com] [FR] [DE] [UK]

James Joyce was influenced by Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), an Italian philosopher who proposed a theory of cyclical history in his major work, New Science. Joyce puns on his name many times in Finnegans Wake, including the “first” sentence: “by a commodius vicus of recirculation”. Vico’s theory involves the recurrence of three stages of history: the age of gods, the age of heroes, and the age of humans—after which the cycle repeats itself. Finnegans Wake begins in mid-sentence, with the continuation of the book’s unfinished final sentence, creating a circle whereby the novel has no true beginning or end. —http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return [Oct 2006]

See also Giambattista Vico