About Literary Nonsense

What is it anyway?

Literary nonsense refers to a genre of literature, whether poetry or prose, that plays with conventions of language and logic through a careful balance of sense and non-sense elements. Its strict adherence to structure is balanced by semantic chaos and play with logic. Usually formal diction and tone are balanced with an inherent topsy-turvyness and absurdity. The effect of nonsense is often caused by an excess of meaning, rather than a lack of it.[1] The genre is most easily recognizable by the various techniques it uses to create nonsensical effects, such as neologism and faulty cause and effect. The forms of nonsense writing can vary widely; it usually lives like a parasite within the host of another genre or type of literature, and, as such, can appear as romantic verse, travel writing, short story, lyric poetry, natural history, journalism, alphabet, and recipes, to name a few. [2] For a text to be considered within the literary nonsense genre, it must have an abundance of nonsense techniques that tend to overshadow the host genre. If the text employs only occasional nonsense techniques, then it may not classify as literary nonsense, though it may have a nonsensical effect. Often (though not necessarily) humorous, nonsense has a kind of humor derived from a different source than a joke: nonsense is funny because it does not make sense, as opposed to most humor which is funny because it does. Sometimes this kind of writing is inaccurately referred to as "nonsense verse", which is inaccurate not because nonsense verse does not exist, but because nonsense can appear in non-verse forms.

Audience

While much nonsense from the nineteenth century onward has been written for children, the genre has a much longer history in adult forms. Noel Malcolm, in his book The Origins of English Nonsense, gives a good history of the genre in its adult form, starting with figures such as John Hoskyns, Henry Peacham, John Sanford, and John Taylor (all early seventeenth century).[3] It has also appeared as an important element in the works of figures such as James Joyce, Flann O'Brien, and Eugene Ionesco. Literary nonsense, as opposed to folk forms of nonsense that have always existed, was first written for children in the early nineteenth century. It was popularized by Edward Lear, and later by Lewis Carroll. Regardless of the intended audience, it is usually enjoyed by both adults and children for its careful artistry, absurd logic, adherence to form, delight in sound, sense of play, and subversive tendencies.

What nonsense is not

Pure gibberish, such as "Sluggahbooh chinftifg gahgahgah axxyt ipipi" may qualify as nonsense in the dictionary definition, but in terms of nonsense art, it is low on the scale. This is so mainly because such a statement does not exhibit the kind of balance needed to make good nonsense that challenges us to play with meanings. This statement has very little semantic, syntactic, phonetic or contextual meaning (though of course no statement can be completely without meaning )[4]. In other words, there is not enough sense here for it to be nonsense. Gibberish can, however, be used occasionally as a device within a nonsense text, such as "Hey Diddle Diddle."

Nonsense artists

The two most celebrated nonsense writers in English are Edward Lear (1812-1888) and Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) (1832-1898), although nonsense existed in English long before the nineteenth century.

Some of the most talented writers in English who have contributed to the genre are: Mervyn Peake, Spike Milligan, Edward Gorey, Flann O'Brien, Alan Watts, Dr. Seuss, Carl Sandburg, Laura E. Richards, Jack Prelutsky, Shel Silverstein, John Lennon, Michael Rosen, Anushka Ravishankar, Mike Gordon, Nicholas Daly, James Thurber, and, most recently, Dr. and Mr. Doris Haggis-on-Whey (Dave Eggers and his brother Bill). Writers of nonsense from other languages include Christian Morgenstern (German), Sukumar Ray (Bengali), Alfred Jarry and Erik Satie (French), and Lennart Hellsing (Swedish).