Like most works of literature, Finnegans Wake rewards close reading, a method of textual analysis that involves close attention to language, structure, and literary devices. The Wake generally requires far more demanding and involved forms of close reading than most literary texts because of the complexity of its style and content.

The Wake also rewards what we might call “far reading,” where the reader has to draw together information from different parts of the text, often signaled by echoes. Again, this is true of other works of literature, but the complexities of the Wake also introduce difficulties here.