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“DOES IT BUZZ?”: IMAGE AND TEXT IN EDWARD LEAR'S LIMERICKS

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2017

Constance W. Hassett
Constance W. Hassett*
Affiliation:
Fordham University
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Extract

The limericks of Edward Lear (1812–1888) prompted a mid-Victorian craze that flourishes to this day. Gorgeously illustrated new limericks appear in a 2015 issue of Poetry magazine (Madrid), a five-line skewering of Stalin is tucked into a recent New York Times obituary (Grimes). The newly founded Edward Lear Society celebrates at the Knowsley estate, and the keeper of the Edward Lear website adds a new feature on Lear and Comics. The British Academy's Chatterton lecturer attends to Lear's birds, including the parrot that “seized” a man's nose and the raven that “danced a quadrille” (Bevis 39, 41) – Lear's first work, it must be remembered, was the magnificent Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots (1832). Of course he is best known today as a writer of nonsense (Peck 15). The illustrated limerick, his lighthearted venture into a double genre, perennially raises questions among his admirers and scholars about the internal dynamics linking its components. Borrowing from recent discussions of various picture-poem combinations, one might call the illustrated limericks in A Book of Nonsense “picture-limericks” (Dilworth 42), “imagetexts” (Mitchell, Picture Theory 89), or “iconotexts” (Louvel). As the labels all suggest, the core issue is the proximity of two media and whether or how they converge.

Type
Research Article
Information
Victorian Literature and Culture , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 685 - 707
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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