Introduction: When Play Becomes Unavoidable
Nonsense poetry teaches us how to play with meaning without collapse. Carroll, Lear, and Peake invite the reader into systems that are coherent locally, pleasurable experientially, and open globally. Participation is encouraged, but not yet compulsory.
With James Joyce and Peter Greenaway, something changes.
Here, play is no longer optional. The work does not function unless the reader or viewer accepts the burden of participation. Meaning is not merely underdetermined; it is withheld unless co-actualised. These works do not present puzzles to be solved, but systems to be inhabited.
This post marks a transition: from nonsense as playful invitation to total play as ontological condition.
1. From Local Play to Systemic Saturation
Nonsense poetry operates through selective withdrawal:
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reference loosens,
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closure suspends,
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pleasure carries the reader through.
Joyce and Greenaway, by contrast, operate through systemic saturation.
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Constraints multiply rather than relax.
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Perspectives proliferate rather than stabilise.
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No single interpretive frame can dominate.
The result is not confusion, but forced relational engagement. The reader or viewer must navigate the system actively, or meaning simply does not appear.
2. Joyce’s Ulysses: Play at the Scale of a World
Each episode of Ulysses operates under a distinct local regime:
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stylistic,
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grammatical,
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mythic,
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perspectival.
No episode explains its rules in advance. The reader learns them by living inside them.
This is Carroll’s Wonderland expanded to the scale of a city and a day:
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local coherence everywhere,
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global synthesis nowhere.
Meaning in Ulysses is not discovered; it is actualised through traversal. The novel teaches an ontological lesson:
there is no privileged cut from which the whole can be seen.
3. Finnegans Wake: When Construal Outruns Identity
With Finnegans Wake, Joyce pushes play beyond individuation itself.
Words no longer stabilise as tokens. Language becomes:
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rhythmic,
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recursive,
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etymologically resonant,
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multi-directional.
This is not nonsense in the Lear sense of lightness. It is semiotic overload: a continuous field in which meaning propagates without settling.
Ontologically, Finnegans Wake explores what happens when:
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construal remains active,
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but identity never completes.
The reader cannot stand outside the system. There is no overview. Only immersion.
4. Greenaway’s The Draughtsman’s Contract: Play as Formal Contract
Greenaway approaches total play from another direction: explicit constraint.
In The Draughtsman’s Contract:
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frames are fixed,
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perspectives are declared,
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rules are contractual,
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vision itself is regulated.
Meaning emerges not from narrative revelation, but from the interaction of constraints. What counts as evidence, truth, or representation depends entirely on the perspectival cut enforced by the system.
Here, the kaleidoscope is no longer metaphorical. It is procedural.
5. Participation as Ethical Demand
What unites Joyce and Greenaway is not difficulty for its own sake, but an ethical stance:
meaning cannot be consumed; it must be participated in.
These works refuse:
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passive spectatorship,
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interpretive dominance,
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false closure.
They demand patience, humility, and a willingness to inhabit incompleteness. This is not elitism; it is ontological honesty. The works will not lie about the nature of meaning by pretending it is given, final, or owned.
6. From Nonsense to Total Play
Seen in this light, the earlier nonsense series becomes preparatory:
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Carroll teaches us to tolerate rule collision.
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Lear teaches us to enjoy meaning without anchoring.
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Peake teaches us to survive semiotic density.
Joyce and Greenaway then remove the safety net. The play is no longer episodic or optional. It is total.
The reader or viewer must turn the kaleidoscope themselves — and keep turning.
Conclusion: An Invitation, Not a Program
This post does not attempt to “explain” Joyce or Greenaway. That would miss the point. These works do not reward explanation; they reward inhabitation.
They invite us into a deeper form of play:
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disciplined,
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participatory,
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ethically non-totalising.
If nonsense poetry teaches us how to smile at openness, Joyce and Greenaway teach us how to live inside it.
What comes next is not interpretation, but continued rotation.
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