CHL 424 Nonsense Literature for Children: Structured Absurdity, Subversion, & Certain Creatures of the Sea
In 1846, when Edward Lear's A Book of Nonsense first appeared, the word "nonsense" meant little more than a meaningless trifle. But by 1888, after Lear and Lewis Carroll had transformed the word as a result of their "nonsense" publications for children, Sir Edward Strachey was able to proclaim this new hybrid genre "a true work of the imagination, a child of genius, and its writing one of the Fine Arts." In this class, we will explore Strachey's claim by looking to the historical, political, and cultural contexts for the development of literary nonsense for children, primarily in England and America, but also around the world. Whatever its context, wherever it originates, nonsense exhibits an aesthetic rigor, a playfulness, and a kind of structured subversion that has made it an underground weapon of the disenfranchised. Using Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque, we will look to the origins of nonsense, stemming from folklore such as nursery rhymes, and the sophisticated and silly satires of the eighteenth century. The heart of this class will lie in the Victorian period, but we will look backwards to changing concepts of childhood, the market of children's literature, and shifting political and social contexts. We will then look forward to the myriad paths nonsense has since taken, up to the present day, with writers such as Laura Richardson, Carl Sandburg, Mervyn Peake, Edward Gorey, Dr. Seuss, and Dave Eggers, in addition to writers and artists from eastern and western Europe, India, and Africa.
Prerequisite
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