Introduction: Suspended Closure
At first glance, nonsense poetry seems, by definition, meaningless. A Lear limerick, a Carrollian dialogue, or a Peake fragment appears to defy sense: words wobble, referents vanish, worlds refuse to settle. But the surface impression conceals a far more disciplined operation.
Nonsense does not abolish meaning. It suspends closure. It deliberately constructs a space in which local coherence persists, but global totality is withheld. Grammar, rhythm, and relational patterns are rigorously enforced even as propositional reference flickers. This tension is precisely what gives nonsense poetry its strange pleasure, its uncanny resonance, and its ontological significance.
This episode lays the groundwork for the series by showing that nonsense is not a failure of language, but a structured, perspectival exploration of semiotic play.
1. Meaning Without Fixity
Consider the essential ingredients of nonsense poetry:
-
Words obey syntax and phonotactics.
-
Sentences can be parsed and understood in terms of structure.
-
Events occur in a relationally coherent—but contextually unstable—space.
In other words, nonsense depends on structure before substance. The semiotic system is real, but the referential content is fluid. Meaning emerges not from a fixed mapping to reality, but from construals actualised locally, like images in a kaleidoscope or stairs in an Escher drawing.
A word like “Jabberwocky” is not meaningless; it is meaning enacted under a perspectival cut. It draws on phonetic, morphological, and syntactic cues to generate a locally coherent phenomenon that refuses to settle into globally conventional reference. The pleasure of nonsense arises precisely from the reader’s negotiation of this space.
2. The Role of Value Systems
Nonsense poetry thrives not just on the manipulation of meaning, but on value-dense structures:
-
Rhyme, rhythm, and sound patterning generate affective coordination.
-
Repetition, cadence, and phonetic resonance establish expectation.
-
Social cues and performative aspects engage the reader in participation.
These value systems operate independently of propositional reference. They scaffold experience, allowing readers to inhabit linguistic and emotional structures without requiring global coherence. Lear’s limericks, for example, delight because they feel coherent, even when semantic mapping fails. Meaning, in relational terms, is secondary to actualisation, but not absent.
3. Semiotic Under-Specification
While value-coordination grounds experience, nonsense poetry also strategically under-specifies semiotic content. It constructs situations in which:
-
Reference is unstable.
-
Identity is fluid.
-
Cause and effect may not commute.
This under-specification is not accidental. It is a deliberate ontological move: to reveal the dependence of meaning on construal, and to make the reader aware that stability is perspectival. Carroll, Lear, and Peake each exploit this principle differently:
-
Carroll: overloads local rules, producing collisions and paradoxes.
-
Lear: emphasises affective resonance over propositional mapping.
-
Peake: produces worlds too dense to fully stabilise, revealing the impossibility of a single cut.
In each case, nonsense poetry demonstrates that openness is intrinsic, not defective.
4. Nonsense as a Practice
The reader’s task is not to decode or reduce nonsense to conventional sense, but to participate in its actualisation. To read nonsense is to:
-
Accept the authority of local coherence.
-
Relinquish the expectation of global closure.
-
Navigate multiple, incompatible semiotic possibilities.
-
Experience play as disciplined, rather than arbitrary, engagement.
This practice mirrors the lessons of the Gödel, Escher, and kaleidoscope pieces. Nonsense poetry provides a felt rehearsal of ontological openness. It is not whimsy; it is ontological training.
5. Play Without Collapse
Finally, nonsense poetry reveals a subtle principle: play requires constraint. The paradoxical freedom of nonsense is made possible because the system is not abandoned:
-
Grammar persists.
-
Rhythm persists.
-
Local rules are respected.
Play is disciplined, and novelty emerges from the rotation of perspectives within these constraints, rather than from a mere absence of rules. This is why nonsense can feel both liberating and exacting, delightful and rigorous.
Conclusion: Rethinking “Nonsense”
In sum, nonsense poetry is not a literary anomaly or a failure of language. It is a methodical exploration of semiotic and value systems under conditions of ontological openness. By suspending global closure while enforcing local coherence, nonsense invites readers to inhabit a world in which meaning is dynamic, relational, and perspectival.
This episode sets the stage for the series. In the following episodes, we will explore how Carroll, Lear, and Peake each enact distinct strategies of nonsense, revealing the discipline, artistry, and ontological insight that underlies this playful, rigorous, and endlessly generative form.
No comments:
Post a Comment