Conclusion

Abstract

The anarchic approach to language learning demanded by the lect of Finnegans Wake and the specific version of this approach depicted in its tenth chapter (“Night Lessons”) represent an extreme version of James Joyce’s approach to pedagogy. This extreme does not suggest a rupture from the way he taught or from the way his teaching influenced his other works of fiction. Rather, it is the culmination of a process in which he moves from thinking about and practicing education to imagining what education could be absent the arbitrary rules of standardized language within which he had been expected to work as both a student and an instructor.