By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
‘The Dong with a Luminous Nose’ is one of the greatest nonsense poems by the Victorian poet and artist Edward Lear (1812-88). Among other things, Lear is known for popularising the limerick among Victorian readers, and for being, along with Lewis Carroll, probably the chief exponent of nonsense verse in English. (We have gathered together our pick of the best nonsense poems in a separate post.)
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle enjoys the comic verse by one of the most ‘miserable’ poets in English literature
‘The Crocodile or, Public Decency’ is not one of the best-known poems of A. E. Housman (1859-1936), the classical scholar and poet who failed his Finals at Oxford but went on to become Professor of Latin at Cambridge (and to inspire the character of Inspector Morse, I might add).
In this week’s Dispatches from The Secret Library, Dr Oliver Tearle analyses a poem that represents the meeting-point of ancient riddle and modern nonsense
‘I Saw a Peacock’ is an anonymous nonsense poem that is included in Quentin Blake’s The Puffin Book of Nonsense Verse (Puffin Poetry), a wonderful anthology which I’d recommend to any fans of nonsense verse. I thought I’d make ‘I Saw a Peacock’ the topic of this week’s Secret Library column because is a fun little poem and a few words of analysis will help to show how clever and fun it is in its construction. It’s also not as well-known as it perhaps should be. But first, here is the poem:
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Although he’s well-known as a pioneer of the poetic form known as the limerick, Edward Lear (1812-88) wrote a number of other classic poems which are among the finest examples of ‘nonsense verse’. Here are five of Edward Lear’s best poems, along with some information about each of them.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Lewis Carroll (1832-98) is probably best-remembered for his two novels for children, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass. The latter of these two books contained the classic nonsense poem, ‘Jabberwocky’, and Carroll’s poetry can easily match that of his fellow Victorian nonsense-maker, Edward Lear for sheer fun and zaniness.
Below we’ve picked what we think are Lewis Carroll’s five best poems, complete with some information about them.