Edinburgh Companion to Nonsense

Anna Barton is Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature at the University of Sheffield. Previous publications include, The Edinburgh Companion to Nonsense (with James Williams) (2021), Nineteenth-Century Poetry and Liberal Though: Forms of Freedom (2017), In Memoriam: A Reading Guide (2012) and Tennyson’s Name: Identity and Responsibility in the Poetry of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (2008). James Williams is a Senior Lecturer in English at the University of York. He is the author of Edward Lear (Liverpool University Press, 2018) and co-editor, with Matthew Bevis, of Edward Lear and the Play of Poetry (OUP, 2016). He has published articles on Alfred Tennyson, Samuel Beckett, Lewis Carroll, and Victorian comic verse.

This is the most capacious and thought-provoking volume of essays on nonsense yet published. Barton and Williams’s animating question - "What kinds of things can we say or feel when we make nonsense that we cannot when we make sense?'' - can be felt throughout the book as it moves appealingly across periods and continents. The Edinburgh Companion to Nonsense is a brilliant study of the many lives that nonsense can live. It will become a seminal collection.

• AcknowledgementsList of IllustrationsIntroduction: Companionable Nonsense - Anna Barton and James WilliamsPart I: Notes towards a History of English Nonsense1. Buba, Blictrix, Bufbaf: Medieval Theory and Practice of Nonsense - Jordan Kirk2. ‘The Best Fooling’: Every Man Out of His Humour, Twelfth Night, and Early Modern English Nonsense Games - Rebecca Fall3. Nonsense in the Age of Reason - Freya Johnston4. ‘The Light of Sense | Goes Out’: Romantic Poetry and Victorian Nonsense Poetry - Peter Swaab5. Victorian Nonsense and Its Kinships - Martin Dubois6. Shady Pleasures: Modernist Nonsense - Noreen Masud7. Mid-Century Nonsense and Destructive Mockery - Adam PiettePart II: Global Nonsenses8. In Search of Ancient Greek Nonsense - Sara Chiarini9. Traditional Moorings, Modern Practices: Indian Literary Nonsense - Sumanyu Satpathy10. Signs and Wonders: Two Approaches to Nonsense in Russia - Jamie Rann11. ‘What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?’: Nonsense in French - Alexandra Lukes12. Italian Nonsense: Tradition, Translation, Translocation, Transcodification (and a Trinity) - Alessandro GiammeiPart III: Contexts and Connections13. English ‘hibber-gibber’ and the ‘jargon of France’: Rabelaisian Nonsense in Translation - Hugh Roberts14. Musical Foundations of Nonsense - Michael Heyman15. Doubtful Girls and Silly Women: Nonsense and Gender - Anna Barton16. Queer Nonsense: Query? - Hugh Haughton17. Humans, and Other Nonsense Animals - Cassie Westwood18. Nonsense Among the Philosophers - Michael Potter19. ‘Word beyond Speech’: Nonsense and the Sacred - James Williams Notes on Contributors