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Literary nonsense
Literary nonsense (or nonsense literature) is a broad categorization of literature that uses sensical and nonsensical
elements to defy language conventions or logical reasoning. 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. Nonsense is often humorous
in nature, although its humor is derived from its nonsensical nature, as opposed to most humor which is funny
because it does make sense.[1]
History
The roots of literary nonsense are divided into two
branches. The first and older branch is traced back to
the folk tradition, folktales, dramas, rhymes, songs, and
games, such as the nursery rhyme "Hey Diddle
Diddle".[2] Schoolyard rhymes and the literary figure
Mother Goose are somewhat contemporary
incarnations of this style of writing. Its role in the folk
tradition varies from mnemonic device to parody and
satire.
Theory
In literary nonsense, formal diction and tone may be balanced with elements of absurdity. It is most easily
recognizable by the various techniques it uses to create nonsensical effects, such as faulty cause and effect,
portmanteau, neologism, reversals and inversions, imprecision, simultaneity, picture/text incongruity, arbitrariness,
infinite repetition, negativity or mirroring, and misappropriation.[6] Nonsense tautology, reduplication, and absurd
precision have also been used effectively in the nonsense genre.[7] . For a text to be within the bounds 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 techniques, then it may not be classified as literary nonsense, though there may be a
Literary nonsense 2
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 Sanford, and
John Taylor lived in the early seventeenth century and were noted nonsense authors in their time.[19] Nonsense was
also an important element in the works of Flann O'Brien and Eugene 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.
Literary nonsense 3
Nonsense writers
The most celebrated nonsense writers in English literature are Edward Lear (1812–1888) and Lewis Carroll (Charles
Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832–1898).
Other nonsense writers in English literature:
• Douglas Adams
• Ivor Cutler
• Nicholas Daly
• Dave Eggers and his brother Christopher, writing as Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey
• Mike Gordon
• Edward Gorey
• John Lennon
• Spike Milligan
• Flann O'Brien
• Mervyn Peake
• Jack Prelutsky
• Anushka Ravishankar
• Laura E. Richards
• Theodore Roethke
• Michael Rosen
• Carl Sandburg
• Dr. Seuss
• Shel Silverstein
• James Thurber
• Alan Watts
Writers of nonsense from other languages include:
• Lennart Hellsing (Swedish)
• Zinken Hopp (Norwegian)
• Alfred Jarry (French)
• Christian Morgenstern (German)
• Halfdan Rasmussen (Danish)
• Sukumar Ray (Bengali)
• Mangesh Padgavkar (Marathi)
• Erik Satie (French)
• Daniil Kharms (Russian)
Popular culture
David Byrne, front man 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". The Talking Heads also set Hugo
Ball's Dada poem "Gadji beri bimba" to music as the song "I Zimbra."
Syd Barrett, frontman and founder of Pink Floyd, was known for his often nonsensical songwriting influenced by
Lear and Carroll that featured heavily on Pink Floyd's first album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn.[20] Hip Hop
music from labels such as Definitive Jux and Big Dada and artist such as MF DOOM, El-P and Aesop Rock often
contain nonsense lyrics where the rhyming is phonetically correct but content utterly incoherent.
Steven Soderbergh's film Schizopolis employs surrealism and dada to construct a nonsensical plot.
Literary nonsense 4
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds is a perfect example of a nonsensical text in a song.
Glen Baxter's comic work is often nonsense, relying on the baffling interplay between word and image. Zippy the
Pinhead, by Bill Griffith, is an American strip that mixes philosophy and pop culture in its nonsensical processes.
Further reading
Primary sources
• 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
• Gordon, Mike. Mike's Corner: Daunting Literary Snippets from Phish's Bassist. Boston: Bulfinch Press, 1997.
• Gorey, Edward. Amphigorey. New York: Perigee, 1972.
_________. Amphigorey too. New York: Perigee, 1975.
_________. Amphigorey Also. Harvest, 1983.
_________. Amphigorey Again. Barnes & Noble, 2002.
• Kipling, Rudyard, Just So Stories.New York: Signet, 1912.
• Lear, Edward, The Complete Verse and Other Nonsense. Ed. Vivian Noakes. London: Penguin, 2001.
• Lennon, John, Skywriting by Word of Mouth and other writings, including The Ballad of John and Yoko. New
York: Perennial, 1986.
_________. The Writings of John Lennon: In His Own Write, A Spaniard in the Works New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1964, 1965.
• Milligan, Spike, Silly Verse for Kinds. London: Puffin, 1968.
• Morgenstern, Christian, The Gallows Songs: Christian Morgenstern's "Galgenlieder", trans. Max Knight.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1963.
• Peake, Mervyn, A Book of Nonsense. London: Picador, 1972.
_________. Captain Slaughterboard Drops Anchor. London: Country Life Book, 1939.
_________. Rhymes Without Reason. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1944.
_________. Titus Groan. London: , London: Methuen, 1946.
• Rasmussen, Halfdan. Hocus Pocus: Nonsense Rhymes, adapted from Danish by Peter Wesley-Smith, Illus. IB
Spang Olsen. London: Angus & Robertson, 1973.
• Ravishankar, Anushka, Excuse Me Is This India? illus. by Anita Leutwiler, Chennai: Tara Publishing, 2001.
_________. Wish You Were Here, Chennai: Tara Publishing, 2003.
_________. Today is My Day, illus. Piet Grobler, Chennai: Tara Publishing, 2003.
• Richards, Laura E., I Have a Song to Sing You: Still More Rhymes, illus. Reginald Birch. New York, London: D.
Appleton—Century Company, 1938.
_________. Tirra Lirra: Rhymes Old and New, illus. Marguerite Davis. London: George G. Harrap, 1933.
• Roethke, Theodore, I Am! Says the Lamb: a joyous book of sense and nonsense verse, illus. Robert Leydenfrost.
New York: Doubleday & Company, 1961.
Literary nonsense 5
• Rosen, Michael, Michael Rosen’s Book of Nonsense, illus. Claire Mackie. Hove: Macdonald Young Books, 1997.
• Sandburg, Carl, Rootabaga Stories. London: George G. Harrap, 1924.
_________. More Rootabaga Stories.
• Seuss, Dr. On Beyond Zebra!New York: Random House, 1955.
• Thurber, James, The 13 Clocks, 1950. New York: Dell, 1990.
• Watts, Alan, Nonsense. New York: E.P. Dutton, 1975; originally Stolen Paper Review Editions, 1967.
Anthologies
• A Book of Nonsense Verse, collected by Langford Reed, Illus. H.M. Bateman. New York & London: G.P.
Putnam's Sons, 1926.
• The Chatto Book of Nonsense Poetry, ed. Hugh Haughton. London: Chatto & Windus, 1988.
• The Everyman Book of Nonsense Verse, ed. Louise Guinness. New York: Everyman, 2004.
• The Faber Book of Nonsense Verse, ed. Geoffrey Grigson. London: Faber, 1979.
• A Nonsense Anthology, collected by Carolyn Wells. New York: Charles Schribner's Sons, 1902.
• O, What Nonsense!, selected by William Cole, illus. Tomi Ungerer. London: Methuen & Co., 1966.
• The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse, selected and illus. Quentin Blake. London: Puffin, 1994.
• 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: [21]
Secondary sources
• Andersen, Jorgen, “Edward Lear and the Origin of Nonsense” English Studies, 31 (1950): 161-166.
• Baker, William, “T.S. Eliot on Edward Lear: An Unnoted Attribution,” English Studies, 64 (1983): 564-566.
• Bouissac, Paul, “Decoding Limericks: A Structuralist Approach,” Semiotica, 19 (1977): 1-12.
• 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 and Nicholson, 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
Literary nonsense 6
Notes
[1] Tigges, Anatomy, p. 255.
[2] Heyman, Boshen, pp. 2-4
[3] Malcolm, p. 4.
[4] Malcolm, pp. 6-7.
[5] Malcolm, p. 14.
[6] Tigges, Anatomy, pp. 166-167.
[7] Heyman, Naissance, pp. xxvi-xxix
[8] Lecercle, p. 29.
[9] Lecercle, p. 64.
[10] Chomsky, p. 15.
[11] Tigges, p. 2.
[12] Tigges, p. 81.
[13] Anderson, p. 33.
[14] Tigges, pp. 108-110.
[15] Sandburg, p. 82.
[16] Tigges, Anatomy, p. 95.
[17] Carroll, p. 55.
[18] "Cabaret and Jazz Songs by Dennis Livingston" (http:/ / www. dennislivingston. com/ jl_mairzy. htm). . Retrieved 24 April 2010.
[19] Malcolm, p. 127.
[20] O'Hagan, Sean (25 April 2010). "Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head by Rob Chapman" (http:/ / www. guardian. co. uk/ music/ 2010/ apr/
25/ syd-barrett-irregular-head-review). The Guardian (London). . Retrieved 24 April 2010.
[21] http:/ / tenthrasa. blogspot. com
[22] http:/ / hdl. handle. net/ 1905/ 330
References
• Carroll, Lewis (1865). Alice's adventures in wonderland (http://books.google.com/
books?id=CLoNAAAAYAAJ). Macmillan.
• Celia Catlett Anderson; Marilyn Apseloff (1989). Nonsense literature for children: Aesop to Seuss (http://books.
google.com/books?id=QrtlAAAAMAAJ). Library Professional Publications. ISBN 9780208021618.
• Chomsky, Noam (2002). Syntactic structures (http://books.google.com/books?id=a6a_b-CXYAkC). Walter de
Gruyter. ISBN 9783110172799.
• Heyman, Michael (2007). "An Indian Nonsense Naissance" in The Tenth Rasa: An Anthology of Indian
Nonsense. New Delhi: Penguin. ISBN 0143100866.
• Heyman, Michael Benjamin (1999). Isles of Boshen: Edward Lear's literary nonsense in context (https://dspace.
gla.ac.uk/handle/1905/330). Scotland: Glasgow.
• Lecercle, Jean-Jacques (4 April 1994). Philosophy of nonsense: the intuitions of Victorian nonsense literature
(http://books.google.com/books?id=98fiZnOEy9gC). Routledge. ISBN 9780415076531.
• Malcolm, Noel (1997). The origins of English nonsense (http://books.google.com/
books?id=qWkgAQAAIAAJ). HarperCollins.
• Sandburg, Carl (1922). Rootabaga stories (http://books.google.com/books?id=EEMeAAAAMAAJ). Harcourt,
Brace and Company.
• Tigges, Wim (1988). An anatomy of literary nonsense (http://books.google.com/books?id=oWZdgvSJ3bgC).
Rodopi. ISBN 9789051830194.
Literary nonsense 8
External links
• Edward Lear Home Page (http://www.nonsenselit.org/Lear/index.html)
• A Blog of Bosh: dedicated to nonsense literature and Edward Lear (http://www.nonsenselit.org/wordpress/)
• Lewis Carroll on Victorian Web (http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/carroll/index.html)
• Dr. Suess and Nonsense (http://www3.sympatico.ca/ian.g.mason/Nonsense.htm)
Article Sources and Contributors 9
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