The two 19th century British nonsense poets Lewis Carroll and Edward Lear were well-known during their lifetimes for forms of artistic achievement other than their humorous poetry: Lewis Carroll for his Alice books and Lear for his landscape painting. But the poems Jabberwocky by Carroll and Lear’s The Owl and the Pussy-cat are now considered two of the greatest nonsense poems in the English language.
Both poems were coincidentally published in the year 1871. They were written ostensibly for children, but can be understood on different levels and are, and always have been, read with enjoyment by adults and children alike.
Lewis Carroll, the name a pseudonym of Charles Lutwidge Dodson, was an Oxford mathematics don who wrote children’s books in his spare time. The poem Jabberwocky comes from the book Through the Looking Glass (and what Alice found there), and although it can be and usually is read independently, it is firmly rooted in its book which even includes an interpretation of it. Alice has read the poem, which was written in mirror writing, but doesn’t quite understand it so the character Humpty Dumpty offers his analysis, which may or may be Carroll’s.
The interpretation includes definitions of some of the made-up words in the poem, and to back himself up Humpty modestly says, “I can explain all the poems that ever were invented – and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet”, thereby continuing the nonsense theme.
Jabberwocky can be read both literally and figuratively. Telling the story of a creature, the ‘jabberwock’, that ends up being killed, it can be read as an adventure story or an ‘overcoming the monster story’, with all the features of setting and atmosphere that allows. Taken figuratively, it can be interpreted as an illustration of how not to succumb to nonsense, to the extent of getting rid of it completely. This has led to the meaning of Carroll’s invented word ‘jabberwock’ and its derivative ‘jabberwocky’ being defined as nonsense, and both words have now happily entered the English language.
Lear’s The Owl and the Pussy-cat was published in his book Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets.The poem features four anthropomorphised animals – an owl, a cat, a pig and a turkey – and tells of the mutual love and consequent wedding of the owl and the pussy-cat.
All four characters are quite accomplished in their actions. The owl and the pussy-cat decide to embark on a voyage, for which they take care to be well equipped with food (honey) and money. The supporting characters are equally engaged in everyday events, with the pig undertaking a financial transaction and the turkey presiding over the wedding.
Are there layers in the poem beyond the immediate story it tells? Being a nonsense poem, it presumably is not required to have a deeper meaning, but there must be something behind its enduring popularity. One theory is that it is a commentary on Victorian social mores, but as the critic Oliver Tearle says, ‘The usual rules of literary analysis don’t seem to apply with nonsense literature.’ Edward Lear as a master of nonsense verse was also well-known for his limericks.
Both Jabberwocky and The Owl and the Pussy-cat make use of language, form and imagery. Ostensibly children’s poems, they also both came with illustrations: Tenniel who was the original illustrator for the Alice books created a picture of the jabberwock, and Lear, as a draftsman and artist, illustrated his own work. Looking at the original pictures places the poems more firmly in the 19th century than perhaps the poems themselves do, which are in a way timeless.
The poems are prime examples of how invented words and nonsense often go hand in hand with humour. Original words invented by both poets for their poems have had their meanings extracted from their context in the poems. Could other words have been used by the poets in these instances? Possibly, but the poems would have been less lively and asked less of the read (or listener), and potentially be less humorous.
In addition to word ‘jabberwocky’ entering the English language, the words ‘chortle’ and ‘galumph’ also created by Carroll have taken their place there. Lear invented the word ‘runcible’ for his poem, naming it after this friend George Runcy, and paired it with the word spoon (although he used the word with other nouns in other poems) thus creating the ‘runcible spoon’. Runcy is said to have invented a spoon on the strength of it, where the dish of the spoon is at right angles to the handle.
Both poems remain popular with the general reader, both children and adults, and neither poem has been out of print since it was first published. There are no signs of their popularity diminishing either, as new generations discover their intrinsic interest and charm.
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Authors
Titles
Jabberwocky, by Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking Glass, by Lewis Carroll, The Owl and the Pussy-cat, by Edward Lear, Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets, by Edward Lear