The Nonsense of Edward Lear

A study of the work and life of Edward Lear, in addition to other benefits and pleasures, holds promise of revealing something of the psychological nature of nonsense. I refer now to nonsense as a form of the comic—a playing with words, with form, and with line—intended, more or less, by its creator to amuse and entertain others, while surreptitiously serving more important, sometimes deep-seated, emotional needs of his own. An examination of these highly personal needs of the creator of nonsense—Edward Lear specifically—will constitute the main effort of this inquiry. I will not attempt a comprehensive and exhaustive treatise on nonsense in general, nor will I undertake a systematic investigation into the nature of talent, of creativity, or of taste.

Moss (11) points out that nonsense is by no means the same as no sense. 'The senseless', he writes, 'is merely irrational, but nonsense holds the plausible and the implausible in tension and makes of the absurd an entertainment, a release, and a form of criticism'. Greenacre says of nonsense that, 'It leaps the barriers of apparent similarities and exists seemingly in its own incomparable realm and independent right, denying even relationships by contrast and comparison which are implicit in exaggeration and simile. Nonsense is not only the lack of reason or loss of expected order, but it is the defiance of reason which men value most, and it is achieved by apparent isolation, inconsequence and generally heedless disconnection. There is a quality of (generally quiet) explosive destructiveness about sheer nonsense—an unannounced nihilism—which is never absolutely achieved, but is felt in its subtle implication' (3, p. 271).