Cover not available

In:Style as Motivated Choice: In memory of Peter Verdonk (1934–2021)
Edited by Michael Burke and Joanna Gavins
[Linguistic Approaches to Literature 44] 2025
► pp. 93–113

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

Chapter 6
Where owls nest in beards

Making sense of Edward Lear’s Books of Nonsense

 | University of Nottingham
Published online: 8 May 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/lal.44.06wal
Abstract
In this chapter I analyse the 200 limericks which comprise Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense (1846, 3rd revised edition 1861) and More Nonsense (1872), which, word and illustration together provide a rich database for the study of the textual landscapes and readers’ mental representations. Degrees of incongruity between real world expectations of “normal” behaviour and that of Lear’s world(s) invoke corresponding gradations of humour, even surrealism and subversion. In order to show the extent of Lear’s creativity in language I make a working distinction between “nonsense” at the discourse level involving sound and word play; and “absurdity” at the text-world level. I give due consideration throughout to possible differences of world-views and responses between nineteenth-century and present-day readers; and between adults and children.
Article outline
  • Introduction: Lear, sense, nonsense and humour
  • Grammetrics and language play
  • Text-world(s) and the absurd
  • Dialogue, subversion and the “collective voice”
  • Conclusion: Lear’s books of “nonsense” in context
  • Note
  • References
References (41)
References
Anon. 1820. A History of Sixteen Wonderful Old Women. London: Harris & Son.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Attardo, S. 2001. Humorous Texts: A Semantic and Pragmatic Analysis. Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Byrom, T. 1977. Nonsense and Wonder: The Poems and Cartoons of Edward Lear. New York: E.P. Dutton.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Carpenter, H. 1985. Secret Gardens: A Study of the Golden Age of Children’s Literature. London; George Allen & Unwin Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Deleuze, G. 2003. The Logic of Sense. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ede, L. 1987. An introduction to the nonsense literature of Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll. In Explorations in the Field of Nonsense, W. Tigges (ed), 47–60. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gavins, J. 2007. Text World Theory: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2013. Reading the Absurd. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gavins, J. & Lahey, E. 2016. World building in discourse. In World Building: Discourse in the Mind, J. Gavins & E. Lahey (eds), 1–13. London: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grice, P. 1975. Logic and conversation. In Syntax and Semantics 3: Speech Acts, P. Cole & J. L. Morgan (eds), 45–54. New York: Academic Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hark, I. R. 1978. Edward Lear: eccentricity and Victorian angst. Victorian Poetry 16: 112–122.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holqvist, M. (ed) The Dialogic Imagination. Austin: University of Texas Press
Jackson, H. (ed). 1947. The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear. London: Faber & Faber.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lear, E. ?1895. The Book of Nonsense and More Nonsense. London: Frederick Warne & Co. Ltd.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lecercle, J. J. 1994. Philosophy of Nonsense: The Intuitions of Victorian Nonsense Literature. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Nash, W. 1985. The Language of Humour. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Noakes, V. 1985. Edward Lear: 1812–1888. London: Royal Academy of Arts/ Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Orwell. G. 2009. Nonsense poetry. In Shooting an Elephant and Other Essays, G. Orwell (ed), 201–206. London: Penguin.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prickett, S. 2005. Victorian Fantasy. Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ryan, M-L. 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence and Narrative Theory. Indiana, IA: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Samarin. W. J. 1969. Forms and functions of nonsense language. Linguistics 50: 70–74. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Sharpe, R. S. 1822. Anecdotes and Adventures of Fifteen Gentlemen. London: Edward Marshall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
n.d. The Adventures of Fifteen Young Ladies. London: Edward Marshall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shires. L. M. 1988. Fantasy, nonsense, parody and the status of the real: the example of Carroll. Victorian Poetry 26 (3): 267–283.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simpson, P. 1998. Odd talk: studying discourses of incongruity. In Exploring the Language of Drama, J. Culpeper, M. Short & P. Verdonk (eds), 34–53. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2000. Satirical humour and cultural context. In Contextual Stylistics: In Honour of Peter Verdonk, T. Bex, M. Burke & P. Stockwell (eds), 243–266. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stewart, S. 1979. Nonsense: Aspects of Intertextuality in Folklore and Literature. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Strachey, L. 1888. Nonsense as a fine art. Quarterly Review 167: 335–365.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tigges, W. (ed) 1987. The limerick: the sonnet of nonsense. In Explorations in the Field of Nonsense, W. Tigges (ed), 117–133. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tuer, A. W. (ed). [1898] 1986. Stories from Forgotten Children’s Books. London: Bracken Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Uglow, J. (2017) Mr Lear: A Life of Art and Nonsense. London: Faber & FaberGoogle Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Verdonk, P. 1988. How Can We Know the Dancer from the Dance? Some Literary Stylistic Studies of English Poetry. Amsterdam: Faculty of Letters.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(ed) 1993. Introduction. In Twentieth-century Poetry: From Text to Context, P. Verdonk (ed), 1–5. London: Routledge. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2005. Painting, poetry, parallelism: ekphrasis, stylistics and cognitive poetics. Language and Literature 14(3): 231–244. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wales, K. 1985. The Elephant Joke Book. London: Beaver Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1987. The Return of the Elephant Joke Book. London: Beaver Books.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
1996. Personal Pronouns in Present-day English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2022. Tellers and listeners: deconstructing the collective voice of common opinion In Middlemarch. George Eliot-George Henry Lewes Studies 74 (1): 39–48. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
2024. Changing tastes: reading the cannibalese of Charles Dickens’ Holiday Romance and nineteenth-century popular culture. In Reading Fictional Languages, I. Noletto, J. Norledge & P. Stockwell (eds), 133–143. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Warner, M. 1998. No Go the Bogeyman: Scaring, Lulling and Making Mock. London: Chatto & Windus.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Werth, P. 1999. Text Worlds: Representing Conceptual Space in Discourse. London; Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue