"DOES IT BUZZ?": IMAGE AND TEXT IN EDWARD LEAR'S LIMERICKS. Issue 4 (8th November 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hassett, Constance W.
• Is Part Of: Victorian literature and culture. Volume 45:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 685
• Page End: 707
• Publication Date: 2017-11-08
• Subjects: English literature -- 19th century -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Arts, Victorian -- History and criticism -- Periodicals; Great Britain -- Civilization -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Criticism and interpretation -- Periodicals; Criticism and interpretation -- Periodicals; 820.8
• DOI: 10.1017/S106015031700016X
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1060-1503

Abstract

Abstract : 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.