Literary nonsense (or nonsense literature) is a broad categorization of literature that balances elements that make sense with some that do not, with the effect of subverting language conventions or logical reasoning.[1] Even though the most well-known form of literary nonsense is nonsense verse, the genre is present in many forms of literature.
The effect of nonsense is often caused by an excess of meaning, rather than a lack of it. Its humor is derived from its nonsensical nature, rather than wit or the "joke" of a punch line.[2]
History
Literary nonsense, as recognized since the nineteenth century, comes from a combination of two broad artistic sources. The first and older source is the oral folk tradition, including games, songs, dramas, and rhymes, such as the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle Diddle".[3] The literary figure Mother Goose represents common incarnations of this style of writing.
The second, newer source of literary nonsense is in the intellectual absurdities of court poets, scholars, and intellectuals of various kinds. These writers often created sophisticated nonsense forms of Latin parodies, religious travesties, and political satire, though these texts are distinguished from more pure satire and parody by their exaggerated nonsensical effects.[4]
Today's literary nonsense comes from a combination of both sources.[5] Though not the first to write this hybrid kind of nonsense, Edward Lear developed and popularized it in his many limericks (starting with A Book of Nonsense, 1846) and other famous texts such as "The Owl and the Pussycat", "The Dong with a Luminous Nose", "The Jumblies" and "The Story of the Four Little Children Who Went Around the World". Lewis Carroll continued this trend, making literary nonsense a worldwide phenomenon with Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871). Carroll's poem "Jabberwocky", which appears in the latter book, is often considered quintessential nonsense literature.[6]
Theory
In literary nonsense, certain formal elements of language and logic that facilitate meaning are balanced by elements that negate meaning. These formal elements include semantics, syntax, phonetics, context, representation, and formal diction.[7] The genre is most easily recognizable by the various techniques or devices it uses to create this balance of meaning and lack of meaning, such as faulty cause and effect, portmanteau, neologism, reversals and inversions, imprecision (including gibberish), simultaneity, picture/text incongruity, arbitrariness, infinite repetition, negativity or mirroring, and misappropriation.[8] Nonsense tautology, reduplication, and absurd precision have also been used in the nonsense genre.[9] For a text to be within the genre of literary nonsense, it must have an abundance of nonsense techniques woven into the fabric of the piece. If the text employs only occasional nonsense devices, then it may not be classified as literary nonsense, though there may be a nonsensical effect to certain portions of the work.[10]Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy, for instance, employs the nonsense device of imprecision by including a blank page, but this is only one nonsense device in a novel that otherwise makes sense.[11] In Flann O'Brien's The Third Policeman, on the other hand, many of the devices of nonsense are present throughout, and thus it could be considered a nonsense novel.[12]
Distinction
Gibberish, light verse, fantasy, and jokes and riddles are sometimes mistaken for literary nonsense, and the confusion is greater because nonsense can sometimes inhabit these (and many other) forms and genres.[13]
Pure gibberish, as in the "hey diddle diddle" of nursery rhyme, is a device of nonsense, but it does not make a text, overall, literary nonsense. If there is not significant sense to balance out such devices, then the text dissolves into literal (as opposed to literary) nonsense.[14]
Light verse, which is generally speaking humorous verse meant to entertain, may share humor, inconsequentiality, and playfulness with nonsense, but it usually has a clear point or joke and does not have the requisite tension between meaning and lack of meaning.[15]
Nonsense is distinct from fantasy, though there are sometimes resemblances between them. While nonsense may employ the strange creatures, other worldly situations, magic, and talking animals of fantasy, these supernatural phenomena are not nonsensical if they have a discernible logic supporting their existence. The distinction lies in the coherent and unified nature of fantasy.[16] Everything follows logic within the rules of the fantasy world; the nonsense world, on the other hand, has no comprehensive system of logic, although it may imply the existence of an inscrutable one, just beyond our grasp.[17] The nature of magic within an imaginary world is an example of this distinction. Fantasy worlds employ the presence of magic to logically explain the impossible. In nonsense literature, magic is rare but when it does occur, its nonsensical nature only adds to the mystery rather than logically explaining anything.[18] An example of nonsensical magic occurs in Carl Sandburg's Rootabaga Stories, when Jason Squiff, in possession of a magical "gold buckskin whincher", has his hat, mittens, and shoes turn into popcorn because, according to the "rules" of the magic, "You have a letter Q in your name and because you have the pleasure and happiness of having a Q in your name you must have a popcorn hat, popcorn mittens and popcorn shoes".[19]
Riddles only appear to be nonsense until the answer is found. The most famous nonsense riddle is only so because it originally had no answer.[20] In Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, the Mad Hatter asks Alice "Why is a raven like a writing-desk?" When Alice gives up, the Hatter replies that he does not know either, creating a nonsensical riddle.[21] Some seemingly nonsense texts are actually riddles, such as the popular 1940s song Mairzy Doats, which at first appears to have little discernible meaning but has a discoverable message.[22] Jokes are not nonsense because their humor comes from their making sense, from our "getting" it, while nonsense is funny because it does not make sense, we do not "get" it.[23]
Audience
While most contemporary nonsense has been written for children, the form has an extensive history in adult configurations before the nineteenth century. Figures such as John Hoskyns, Henry Peacham, John Sandford, and John Taylor lived in the early seventeenth century and were noted nonsense authors in their time.[24] Nonsense was also an important element in the works of Flann O'Brien and Eugène Ionesco. Literary nonsense, as opposed to the folk forms of nonsense that have always existed in written history, was only first written for children in the early nineteenth century. It was popularized by Edward Lear and then later by Lewis Carroll. Today, literary nonsense enjoys a shared audience of adults and children.
Incomplete lists of nonsense writers
None of these writers is considered exclusively a "nonsense writer". Some of them wrote texts considered to be in the genre (such as Lear, Carroll, Gorey, Lennon, Sandburg), while others only use nonsense as an occasional device (such as Joyce, Juster). All of these writers wrote outside of the nonsense genre also.[25]
Bob Dylan wrote some lyrics that contain nonsense techniques, especially around the mid-1960s, in songs like "Bob Dylan's 115th Dream" and "Tombstone Blues".[26]
David Byrne, of the art rock/new wave group Talking Heads, employed nonsensical techniques in songwriting. Byrne often combined coherent yet unrelated phrases to make up nonsensical lyrics in songs such as: "Burning Down the House", "Making Flippy Floppy" and "Girlfriend Is Better".[27] This tendency formed the basis of the title for the Talking Heads concert movie, Stop Making Sense. More recently, Byrne published Arboretum (2006), a volume of tree-like diagrams that are "mental maps of imaginary territory". He continues, explaining the aspect of nonsense: "Irrational logic – [...]. The application of logical scientific rigor and form to basically irrational premises. To proceed, carefully and deliberately, from nonsense, with a straight face, often arriving at a new kind of sense."[28]
The cartoonist Glen Baxter's comic work is often nonsense, relying on the baffling interplay between word and image.[30]
The Tomfoolery Show was an American cartoon comedy television series based on the nonsense works of Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, and others.
Zippy the Pinhead, by Bill Griffith, is an American strip that mixes philosophy, including what has been called "Heideggerian disruptions",[31] and pop culture in its nonsensical processes.[32]
Nick Kershaw unintentionally created a nonsensical riddle with his single "The Riddle". He originally wrote gibberish lyrics as a placeholder, but decided to keep them. After the release the public thought the lyrics contained a real riddle, and MCA marketing went along with it, creating widespread fruitless speculation.[33]
Edward Lear was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limericks, a form he popularised.
"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The book tells of Alice's adventures within the back-to-front world of the Looking-Glass world.
The Hunting of the Snark, subtitled An Agony, in Eight fits, is a poem by the English writer Lewis Carroll. It is typically categorised as a nonsense poem. Written between 1874 and 1876, it borrows the setting, some creatures, and eight portmanteau words from Carroll's earlier poem "Jabberwocky" in his children's novel Through the Looking-Glass (1871).
Humpty Dumpty is a character in an English nursery rhyme, probably originally a riddle and one of the best known in the English-speaking world. He is typically portrayed as an anthropomorphic egg, though he is not explicitly described as such. The first recorded versions of the rhyme date from late eighteenth-century England and the tune from 1870 in James William Elliott's National Nursery Rhymes and Nursery Songs. Its origins are obscure, and several theories have been advanced to suggest original meanings.
A limerick is a form of verse that appeared in Limerick, County Limerick, Ireland in the early years of the 18th century. In combination with a refrain, it forms a limerick song, a traditional humorous drinking song often with obscene verses. It is written in five-line, predominantly anapestic and amphibrach trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and share a different rhyme.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is an 1865 English children's novel by Lewis Carroll, a mathematics don at the University of Oxford. It details the story of a girl named Alice who falls through a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of anthropomorphic creatures. It is seen as an example of the literary nonsense genre. The artist John Tenniel provided 42 wood-engraved illustrations for the book.
Light poetry or light verse is poetry that attempts to be humorous. Light poems are usually brief, can be on a frivolous or serious subject, and often feature word play including puns, adventurous rhyme, and heavy alliteration. Typically, light verse in English is formal verse, although a few free verse poets have excelled at light verse outside the formal verse tradition.
Nonsense verse is a form of nonsense literature usually employing strong prosodic elements like rhythm and rhyme. It is often whimsical and humorous in tone and employs some of the techniques of nonsense literature.
An anapaest is a metrical foot used in formal poetry. In classical quantitative meters it consists of two short syllables followed by a long one; in accentual stress meters it consists of two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable. It may be seen as a reversed dactyl. This word comes from the Greek ἀνάπαιστος, anápaistos, literally "struck back" and in a poetic context "a dactyl reversed".
Nonsense is a form of communication, via speech, writing, or any other symbolic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. In ordinary usage, nonsense is sometimes synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous. Many poets, novelists and songwriters have used nonsense in their works, often creating entire works using it for reasons ranging from pure comic amusement or satire, to illustrating a point about language or reasoning. In the philosophy of language and philosophy of science, nonsense is distinguished from sense or meaningfulness, and attempts have been made to come up with a coherent and consistent method of distinguishing sense from nonsense. It is also an important field of study in cryptography regarding separating a signal from noise.
Gertrude Chataway (1866–1951) was the most important child-friend in the life of the author Lewis Carroll, after Alice Liddell. It was Gertrude who inspired his great nonsense mock-epic The Hunting of the Snark (1876), and the book is dedicated to her, and opens with a poem that uses her name as a double acrostic.
Children's poetry is poetry written for, appropriate for, or enjoyed by children.
Today Bandha Ghorar Dim or Toray Bandha Ghorar Dim is a collection of nonsense rhymes by the acclaimed Indian film director Satyajit Ray in Bengali. The collection contains several translated rhymes and limericks besides some original works by him. The book included a translation of Lewis Carroll's Jabberwocky. Translations from Edward Lear and Hilaire Belloc were also there in the collection.
The Lewis Carroll Shelf Award was an American literary award conferred on several books by the University of Wisconsin–Madison School of Education annually from 1958 to 1979. Award-winning books were deemed to "belong on the same shelf" as Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, having enough of the qualities of his work.
The Iron Tonic: Or, A Winter Afternoon in Lonely Valley is a surrealist country-house mystery—that is, a series of clues that do not add up to a solution—written and illustrated by Edward Gorey. It was published in 1969 by Albondoncani Press in a limited edition of 226 copies. It was republished for the trade market by Harcourt, Inc. in the form of a small, hardbound book that is illustrated on both front and back covers.
Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature.
"On the Ning Nang Nong" is a poem by the comedian Spike Milligan featured in his 1959 book Silly Verse for Kids. In 1998 it was voted the UK's favourite comic poem in a nationwide poll, ahead of other nonsense poems by poets such as Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear.
The Doubtful Guest is a short, illustrated book by Edward Gorey, first published by Doubleday in 1957. It is the third of Gorey's books and shares with his others a sense of the absurd, meticulous cross-hatching, and a seemingly Edwardian setting. The book begins with the sudden appearance of a strange, penguin-like creature in a turn-of-the-century manor house. An aristocratic family struggles to coexist with the creature, who is by turns despondent and mischievous. By the final page, the guest has stayed for seventeen years, and shows "no intention of going away".
Anushka Ravishankar is an author of children's books, and co-founder of Duckbill Books, a publishing house.
Langford Reed was a British author, writer and collector of limericks, scriptwriter, director and actor of the silent film era.
Allen, Woody, Without Feathers. New York, Random House, 1972.
Benson, John P. The Woozlebeasts. New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1905.
Burgess, Anthony. A Long Trip to Teatime. London: Dempsey and Squires, 1976.
Carroll, Lewis (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson), Alice in Wonderland (1865). ed. Donald J. Gray, 2nd edition. London: Norton, 1992.
_________. The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll. London: Nonesuch Press, 1940.
Daly, Nicholas. A Wanderer in Og. Cape Town: Double Storey Books, 2005.
[Eggers, Dave and his brother Christopher] aka Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey'. Giraffes? Giraffes!, The Haggis-On-Whey World of Unbelievable Brilliance, Volume 1., Earth: McSweeney's, 2003.
_________. Your Disgusting Head: The Darkest, Most Offensive—and Moist—Secrets of Your Ears, Mouth and Nose, Volume 2., 2004. _________. Animals of the Ocean, In particular the giant squid, Volume 3, 2006 _________. Cold Fusion, Volume 4, 2008
The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse, selected and illus. Quentin Blake. London: Puffin, 1994.
Pumpkin Grumpkin: Nonsense Poems from Around the World, Collected by John Agard and Grace Nichols. London: Walker Books, 2011.
The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense, ed. Michael Heyman, with Sumanyu Satpathy and Anushka Ravishankar. New Delhi: Penguin, 2007. The blog for this book and Indian nonsense:
This Book Makes No Sense, ed. Michael Heyman. New Delhi: Scholastic, 2012. A slim volume for all ages that includes a piece on how to write nonsense.
Secondary sources
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Baker, William, "T.S. Eliot on Edward Lear: An Unnoted Attribution," English Studies, 64 (1983): 564–566.
Byrom, Thomas, Nonsense and Wonder: The Poems and Cartoons of Edward Lear. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1977.
Cammaerts, Emile, The Poetry of Nonsense. London: Routledge, 1925.
Chesterton, G.K., "A Defence of Nonsense," in The Defendant (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1914), pp.42–50.
Chitty, Susan, That Singular Person Called Lear. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988.
Colley, Ann C., Edward Lear and the Critics. Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993.
_________. "Edward Lear's Limericks and the Reversals of Nonsense," Victorian Poetry, 29 (1988): 285–299. _________. "The Limerick and the Space of Metaphor," Genre, 21 (Spring 1988): 65–91.
Cuddon, J.A., ed., revised by C.E. Preston, "Nonsense," in A Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory, 4th edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1976, 1998), pp.551–58.
Davidson, Angus, Edward Lear: Landscape Painter and Nonsense Poet. London: John Murray, 1938.
Deleuze, Gilles, The Logic of Sense, trans. Mark Lester with Charles Stivale, ed. Constantin V. Boundas. London: The Athlone Press, (French version 1969), 1990.
Dilworth, Thomas, "Edward Lear's Suicide Limerick," The Review of English Studies, 184 (1995): 535–38.
_________. "Society and the Self in the Limericks of Lear," The Review of English Studies, 177 (1994): 42–62.
Dolitsky, Marlene, Under the Tumtum Tree: From Nonsense to Sense. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1984.
Ede, Lisa S., "The Nonsense Literature of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll". unpublished PhD dissertation, Ohio State University, 1975.
_________. "Edward Lear's Limericks and Their Illustrations" in Explorations in the Field of Nonsense, ed. Wim Tigges (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), pp.101–116. _________. "An Introduction to the Nonsense Literature of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll" in Explorations in the Field of Nonsense, ed. Wim Tigges (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987), pp.47–60.
Flescher, Jacqueline, "The language of nonsense in Alice," Yale French Studies, 43 (1969–70): 128–44
Guiliano, Edward, "A Time for Humor: Lewis Carroll, Laughter and Despair, and The Hunting of the Snark" in Lewis Carroll: A Celebration, ed. Edward Guiliano (New York, 1982), pp.123–131.
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Heyman, Michael, Isles of Boshen: Edward Lear in Context. PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow, 1999. "DSpace Service – University of Glasgow". Retrieved 12 May 2012.
_________. "A New Defense of Nonsense; or, 'Where is his phallus?' and other questions not to ask" in Children's Literature Association Quarterly, Winter 1999–2000. Volume 24, Number 4 (186–194) _________. "An Indian Nonsense Naissance" in The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian Nonsense, edited by Michael Heyman, with Sumanyu Satpathy and Anushka Ravishankar. New Delhi: Penguin, 2007. _________. "Nonsense", with Kevin Shortsleeve, in Keywords for Children's Literature. eds. Philip Nel and Lissa Paul. New York: NYU Press, 2011. _________. "The Perils and Nonpereils of Literary Nonsense Translation." Words Without Borders. 2 June 2014.
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_________. Edward Lear, 1812–1888. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1985.
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_________. "The Limerick: The Sonnet of Nonsense?" Dutch Quarterly Review, 16 (1986): 220–236. _________. ed., Explorations in the Field of Nonsense. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1987.
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Wullschläger, Jackie, Inventing Wonderland, The Lives and Fantasies of Lewis Carroll, Edward Lear, J.M. Barrie, Kenneth Grahame, and A.A. Milne. London: Methuen, 1995.
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