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Nonsense
Nonsense is a form of communication, via speech, writing, or any other formal logic system, that lacks any coherent meaning. In ordinary usage, nonsense is sometimes synonymous with absurdity or the ridiculous. Many poets, novelists and songwriters have used nonsense in their works, often creating entire works using it for reasons ranging from pure comic amusement or satire, to illustrating a point about language or reasoning. In the philosophy of language and philosophy of science, nonsense is distinguished from sense or meaningfulness, and attempts have been made to come up with a coherent and consistent method of distinguishing sense from nonsense. It is also an important field of study in cryptography regarding separating a signal from noise. Literary The phrase " Colorless green ideas sleep furiously" was coined by Noam Chomsky as an example of nonsense. However, this can easily be confused with poetic symbolism. The individual ''words'' make sense and are arranged ac ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Edward Lear
Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limerick (poetry), limericks, a form he popularised. His principal areas of work as an artist were threefold: as a draughtsman employed to make illustrations of birds and animals, making coloured drawings during his journeys (which he reworked later, sometimes as plates for his travel books) and as a minor illustrator of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poems. As an author, he is known principally for his popular nonsense collections of poems, songs, short stories, botanical drawings, recipes and alphabets. He also composed and published twelve musical settings of Tennyson's poetry. Biography Early years Lear was born into a middle-class family at Holloway, London, Holloway, North London, the penultimate of 21 children (and youngest to survive) of Ann Clark Skerrett and Jeremiah Lear, a stockbr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Limerick (poetry)
A limerick ( ) is a form of verse that appeared in England in the early years of the 18th century. In combination with a refrain, it forms a limerick (song), limerick song, a traditional humorous drinking song often with obscene verses. It is written in five-line, predominantly Anapaest, and amphibrach trimeter with a strict rhyme scheme of AABBA, in which the first, second and fifth line rhyme, while the third and fourth lines are shorter and share a different rhyme. It was popularized by Edward Lear in the 19th century, although he did not use the term. From a Folklore, folkloric point of view, the form is essentially transgressive; violation of taboo is part of its function. According to Gershon Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, this folk form is always obscene and the exchange of limericks is almost exclusive to comparatively well-educated men. Women are figuring in limericks almost exclusively as "villains or victims". Legman dismissed the "clea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nonsense Verse
Nonsense verse is a form of nonsense literature usually employing strong prosodic elements like rhythm and rhyme. It is often whimsical and humorous in tone and employs some of the techniques of nonsense literature. Limericks are probably the best known form of nonsense verse, although they tend nowadays to be used for straightforward humour, rather than having a nonsensical effect. Among writers in English noted for nonsense verse are Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, Mervyn Peake, Edward Gorey, Colin West, Dr. Seuss, and Spike Milligan. The Martian Poets and Ivor Cutler are considered by some to be in the nonsense tradition. Variants In some cases, the humor of nonsense verse relies on the incompatibility of phrases which make grammatical sense but semantic nonsense – at least in certain interpretations – as in the traditional: Compare . Other nonsense verse makes use of nonsense words—words without a clear meaning or any meaning at all. Lewis Carroll and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jabberwocky
"Jabberwocky" is a Nonsense verse, nonsense poem written by Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel ''Through the Looking-Glass'', the sequel to ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1865). The book tells of Alice's adventures within the Parallel universes in fiction, back-to-front world of the Looking-Glass world. In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece characters White King (Through the Looking-Glass), White King and White Queen (Through the Looking-Glass), White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an inverted world, she recognises that the verses on the pages are written in mirror writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems and reads the reflected verse of "Jabberwocky". She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape. "Jabberwocky" is considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Colorless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously
''Colorless green ideas sleep furiously'' was composed by Noam Chomsky in his 1957 book '' Syntactic Structures'' as an example of a sentence that is grammatically well-formed, but semantically nonsensical. The sentence was originally used in his 1955 thesis '' The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory'' and in his 1956 paper "Three Models for the Description of Language". There is no obvious understandable meaning that can be derived from it, which demonstrates the distinction between syntax and semantics, and the idea that a syntactically well-formed sentence is not guaranteed to also be semantically well-formed. As an example of a category mistake, it was intended to show the inadequacy of certain probabilistic models of grammar, and the need for more structured models. Senseless but grammatical Chomsky wrote in his 1957 book '' Syntactic Structures'': It is fair to assume that neither sentence (1) nor (2) had ever previously occurred in an English discourse. Hence, i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Owl And The Pussycat
"The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" is a nonsense verse, nonsense poem by Edward Lear, first published in 1870 in the American magazine ''Our Young Folks'' and again the following year in Lear's own book ''Nonsense Songs, Stories, Botany, and Alphabets''. Lear wrote the poem for a three-year-old girl, Janet Symonds, the daughter of Lear's friend and fellow poet John Addington Symonds and his wife Catherine Symonds. The term "runcible", used for the phrase "runcible spoon", was invented for the poem. It is believed that the cat in the poem was based on Lear's own pet cat, Foss (cat), Foss. Synopsis "The Owl and the Pussy-Cat" features four anthropomorphism, anthropomorphic animals – an owl, a cat, a pig, and a turkey – and tells the story of the love between the title characters who sail off to marry in the land "where the Bong-tree grows". Unfinished sequel Portions of an unfinished sequel, "The Children of the Owl and the Pussy-cat", were published first posthumously during 1938 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
