The Adventure of the Detected Detective: Sherlock Holmes in James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake

What better introduction could there be to Finnegan’s Wake , perhaps the most difficult literary work ever written, than the Sherlock Holmes stories, perhaps the most readable and popular stories ever written? James Joyce made extensive use of Sherlockian material in his work; indeed, Jenkins argues, this use goes to the core of the meaning and structure of Finnegan’s Wake . In this exhaustive and entertaining analysis, Jenkins provides the specific references to Holmes’ adventures in the Wake and examines the context in which they occur and how they relate to the larger Wake themes.