Using Enquiry-Based Learning methods to teach Finnegans Wake to undergraduates

Abstract

Many readers dismiss James Joyce’s final novel as impossible to wade through, with its multilingual puns, songs, jokes, portmanteau words, allusions, scientific references, myths and legends. Given the kinetic elements of any reading experience, features particularly evident in Finnegans Wake, reading inevitably becomes synonymous with interpretation. To that end, this article focuses on the use of Enquiry-Based Learning, or EBL, by one upper-division English literature module, as an opportune methodology with which to encourage students to explore the myriad possible readings which the Wake could support. Joyce created by invention, by collection, and by accident, all of which underscore the value of working together. Particularly because EBL moves away from traditional styles of lecturing and into the realm of deeper, autonomous learning, fostered by collaboration above individual ownership, and motivation above accumulation, it works well with the fluid and amazingly complex and associative constructs inherent in Joyce’s text.