Cover not available

In:Maps and Mapping in Children's Literature: Landscapes, seascapes and cityscapes
Edited by Nina Goga and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer
[Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition 7] 2017
► pp. 167–184

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Chapter 9
“An island made of water quite surrounded by earth”

Mapping out the seascape in nonsense literature

Published online: 14 August 2017
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/clcc.7.10hol
Abstract
This chapter examines the ways in which geography functions in nonsense verse, prose and illustration, and more specifically, in the representations of seascapes. The key purpose of maps, toponyms and topothesia, which conventionally help the readers envision and navigate a fictitious world, tends not to be fulfilled in literary nonsense, even when maps or detailed descriptions are provided. Focusing on the genre-defining nineteenth-century works and their twentieth-century visual re-interpretations, this chapter outlines selected common features of nonsense geography and shows how the nonsense game has since been followed in our own time, using a popular example drawn from contemporary literature.
Article outline
  • Nonsense geography: Seascapes and soundscapes
  • Lear’s limericks
  • Imprecise nonsense geography and soundscape
  • Carroll: Maps as concepts
  • Emptiness (re)imagined and a new nonsense seascape
  • Lear’s realm re-illustrated and mapped
  • The infinite eclecticism of Zamonia
  • “Navigation was always a difficult art”
  • Author queries
  • Notes
  • References
References (45)
References
Primary sources
Carroll, Lewis. 1876. The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony, in Eight Fits, illus. Henry Holiday. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1893. Sylvie and Bruno Concluded. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1976. The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits, illus. Quentin Blake. London: Folio Society.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. The Hunting of the Snark, illus. Tove Jansson. London: Tate.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lear, Edward. 1846. A Book of Nonsense. London: Thomas McLean.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1828–1887. Landscape Drawings, (MS Typ 55.11, MS Typ 55.26, TypDr 805.L513). Houghton Library, Harvard University. <[URL]>
. 1871. Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets. Boston MA: Osgood.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1983. Edward Lear’s Gromboolian Poems, illus. Jenny Thorne. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. The Complete Nonsense and Other Verse, ed. Vivienne Noakes. London: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moers, Walter. 2001. The 13 ½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, trans. James Brownjohn. London: Vintage. (Original work published 1999).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Peake, Mervyn. 1981. Peake’s Progress: Selected Writings and Drawings of Mervyn Peake, ed. Maeve Gilmore. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2011. Complete Nonsense, eds. Robert W. Maslen & G. Peter Winnington. Manchester: Fyfield Books/Carcanet.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Secondary sources
Adams, Robert Martin. 1966. Nil: Episodes in the Literary Conquest of Void during the Nineteenth Century. Oxford: OUP.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Anderson, Celia Catlett, & Apseloff, Marilyn. 1989. Nonsense Literature for Children: Aesop to Seuss. Hamden CN: Library Professional Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beckett, Sandra L. 2009. Crossover Fiction: Global and Historical Perspectives. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Borges, Luis. 1964. On rigour in science. In Dreamtigers, by Luis Borges, 90. Austin TX: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Brotton, Jerry. 2012. A History of the World in Twelve Maps. London: Allen Lane.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carroll, Lewis. 1876. The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony, in Eight Fits. illus. Henry Holiday.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Daly, Niki. 2005. A Wanderer in Og: An Amphigory Devised for Your Amusement. Cape Town: Double Storey.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dodge, Martin, Kitchin, Rob & Perkins, Chris R. 2009. Rethinking Maps: New Frontiers in Cartographic Theory. Abingdon: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Druker, Elina. 2006. Picture book as conceptual space: Spatial transformation in Tove Jansson’s Book about Moomin, Mymble and Little My. In From Colonialism to the Contemporary: Intertextual Transformation in World Children’s and Youth Literature, Lance Weldy (ed.), 114–125. Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eco, Umberto. 1995. On the impossibility of drawing a map of the empire on a scale of 1 to 1. In How to Travel with a Salmon & Other Essays, Umberto Eco, 99–106. San Diego CA: Harcourt Brace (first published 1982).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ede, Lisa S. 1975. The Nonsense Literature of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. PhD dissertation, Ohio State University. <[URL]> (12 March 2016).
1987. Edward Lear’s limericks and their illustrations. In Explorations in the Field of Nonsense, Wim Tigges (ed.), 103–116. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Fisher, Crispin. 1974. A load of old nonsense, Edward Lear resurrected by four publishers. In Children and Literature: Views and Reviews, Virginia Haviland (ed.), 198–201. London: Bodley Head.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Goodacre, Selwyn Hugh. 2006. All the Snarks: The Illustrated Editions of The Hunting of the Snark. Church Hanborough: Inky Parrot Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Heyman, Michael. 1999. Isles of Boshen: Edward Lear’s Literary Nonsense in Context. PhD dissertation, University of Glasgow. <[URL]> (12 March 2016).
. 2003. The decline and rise of literary nonsense in the twentieth century. In Children’s Literature and the Fin de Siècle, Roger McGillis (ed.), 13–21. Westport CN: Praeger.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hildebrandt, Rolf. 1970. Nonsense-Aspekte der englischen Kinderliteratur: Weinheim: Julius Beltz.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Kelen, Christopher, & Sundmark, Björn. 2013. Postscript: Where children rule? In The Nation in Children’s Literature: Nations of Childhood, Christopher Kelen & Björn Sundmark (eds), 263–272. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. 1994. Philosophy of Nonsense: The Intuitions of Victorian Nonsense Literature. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lembke, Gerrit. 2011. “Der Große Ompel.” Kartographie und Topographie in den Romanen Walter Moers. In Walter Moers’ Zamonien-Romane: Vermessungen eines fiktionalen Kontinents, Gerrit Lembke (ed.), 87–120. Göttingen: V & R unipress. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McGillis, Roderick. 2002. Nonsense. In A Companion to Victorian Poetry, Richard Cronin, Alison Chapman & Anthony H. Harrison (eds), 155–170. Malden MA: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Manguel, Alberto & Guadalupi, Gianni. 1999. The Dictionary of Imaginary Places. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Maxwell, Richard. 2010. Palms and temples: Edward Lear’s topographies. Victorian Poetry 48.1: 73–94. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Oppermann, Eva. 2011. Der deutsche Carroll. Walter Moers’ zamonische Romane im Vergleich mit klassischem englischen Nonsense. In Walter Moers’ Zamonien-Romane: Vermessungen eines fiktionalen Kontinents, Gerrit Lemke (ed.), 121–138. Göttingen: V & R unipress. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Reynolds, Kimberley. 2007. Radical Children’s Literature: Future Visions and Aesthetic Transformations in Juvenile Fiction. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sewell, Elizabeth. 1952. The Field of Nonsense. London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shortsleeve, Kevin. 2002. Edward Gorey, children’s literature, and nonsense verse. Children’s Literature Association Quarterly 27(1): 27–39. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sonstroem, David. 1967. Making earnest of game. G. M. Hopkins and nonsense poetry. Modern Language Quarterly 28: 192–206. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stewart, Susan. 1979. Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature. Baltimore MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stockhammer, Robert. 2007. Die Kartierung der Erde: Macht und Lust in Karten und Literatur. Munich: Fink.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tigges, Wim. 1987. Explorations in the Field of Nonsense. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1988. An Anatomy of Literary Nonsense. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wolf, Mark J. P. 2013. Building Imaginary Worlds: The Theory and History of Subcreation. New York NY: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue