The Dynamics of Nonsense Literature: 1846-1940

The thesis outlines the course of Victorian nonsense as a playful form of children’s literature since Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll and its resurgence in the modernist novel as a dialogic form of writing that calls attention to the physicality of the text: its texture, sound, shape and colour. It traces the manner in which literary nonsense and its corresponding irrationality and chaos have been addressed. The thesis aims to widen the critical understanding of literary nonsense and to draw the topic away from the category of juvenile literature. Although the thesis pays particular attention to nonsense language and narrative fiction, my discussion of Victorian nonsense includes other categories of nonsense: portraits, caricatures, rhymes, alphabets, recipes and cookery.