Nonsense and Other Senses: Regulated Absurdity in Literature

231 Pages·2009·14.91 MB·English

by  Elisabetta Tarantino (Author

Nonsense and Other Senses:
Regulated Absurdity in Literature
Edited by
Elisabetta Tarantino with Carlo Caruso
CAMBRIDGE
SCHOLARS
PUBLISH IN
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface ........................................................................................................ ix
Nonsense and Other Senses: Regulated Absurdity in Literature, Acknowledgements .................................................................................. xix
Edited by Elisabetta Tarantino with Carlo Caruso
Introduction ................................................................................................ 1
This book first published 2009
The Nose of Nonsense
Cambridge Scholars Publishing Giuseppe Antonelli
12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK SECTION 1: NONSENSE VERSUS GODLINESS
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Chapter One ............................................................................................... 25
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library "Pape Satan, pape Satan aleppe!" (Inferno 7:1) in Dante's
Commentators, 1322-1570
Simon Gilson
Copyright© 2009 by Elisabetta Tarantino with Carlo Caruso and contributors
All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book m~y be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 55
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electromc, mechamcal, photocopy mg. recordmg or "Between Peterborough and Pentecost": Nonsense and Sin in William
otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Wager's Morality Plays
Elisabetta Tarantino
ISBN (10): 1-4438-1006-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-1006-7
SECTION II: "THERE, TAKE MY COXCOMB": LANGUAGE
GAMES AND SUBVERSION IN EARLY MODERN LITERATURE
Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 89
Off the Paths of Common Sense: From the Frottola to the per motti
and alia burchia Poetic Styles
Michelangelo Zaccarello
Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 117
Fran~ois's Fractured French: The Language of Nonsense in Rabelais
Barbara C. Bowen
Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 127
Performing Nonsense in Early Seventeenth-Century France:
Bruscambille's Galirnatias
Hugh Roberts
vi Table of Contents Nonsense and Other Senses vii
Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 147 Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 275
Nonsense and Liberty: The Language Games of the Fool From Limerick to "Rimelick": The Finnish Nonsense Limerick
in Shakespeare's King Lear and Its Transformations
Hilary Gatti Sakari Katajamiiki
SECTION ill: THE MEANING(LESSNESS) OF Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 295
MEANING(LESSNESS): MODERNIST NONSENSE Meaning less: Giorgio Manganelli' s Poetics of Nonsense
Florian Mussgnug
Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 163
Nonsense and Logic in Franz Kafka Chapter Sixteen ....................................................................................... 313
Neil Allan Intercultural Nonsense? The Humour of Fosco Maraini
Loredana Polezzi
Chapter Eight. .......................................................................................... 181
Apollinaire and the Whatnots Chapter Seventeen ................................................................................... 335
Willard Bohn Fantastica as a Place of Games: Nonsense in the Works of Michael Ende
Rebekka Putzke
Chapter Nine ............................................................................................ 191
"Neither parallel nor slippers": Dada, War, and the Meaning(lessness) SECTION V: NONSENSE, POLITICS, AND SOCIETY
of Meaning(lessness)
Stephen Forcer Chapter Eighteen ..................................................................................... 357
Nonsense and Politics
Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 207 Jean-Jacques Lecercle
The "Wippchen" to Mysticism: Nonsense and Children's Language
in Fritz Mauthner and German Nonsense Poetry Chapter Nineteen ..................................................................................... 381
Magnus Klaue Sergio Tofano's Vispa Teresa between Parody and Nonsense
Federico Appel
Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 227
Non ense, Ban, and Banality in Schwitters's Merz Chapter Twenty ....................................................................................... 399
Julia Genz Nonsense as a Political Weapon in Vaclav Havel's ''Vanek Plays"
Jane Duarte
Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 237
Buildings and Urine: Japanese Modernist Nansensu Literature Contributors ............................................................................................. 415
and the Absurdity of 1920s and 1930s Tokyo Life
Alisa Freedman Index ........................................................................................................ 421
SECTION IV: TAKE CARE OF THE SOUNDS: REAL NONSENSE
Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 259
Non ense and Other Senses
Marijke Boucherie
LIST OF !MAGES
PREFACE
2-1 Diagram of the varieties of linguistic sin discussed in the De
lingua (13th c.) ........................................................................................... 69
This collection comprises the proceedings of the conference "Between
9-1 "L'Amiral cherche une maison a louer" (1916) .............................. 193 Peterborough and Pentecost": Nonsense Literature across Space and
Time, which took place at the University of Warwick on 12-13 May 2006.
It gathers together most of the papers given at the conference, plus three
19-1 An illustration by Sergio Tofano for Trilussa's Vispa Teresa
additional contributions, by Florian Mussgnug, Elisabetta Tarantino, and
383
(1917) ····································································································· Giuseppe Antonelli, the latter serving as Introduction to the volume.
As can be seen from the Table of Contents, our idea of representations
19-2 A page from Il Carriere dei Piccoli, n. 6, 5 February 1922 ........... 391
of nonsense in literature is inclusive and eclectic. By this we do not mean
to extend the definition of what constitutes nonsense, or indeed to attempt
any kind of definition. Our purpose was to offer a gallery of "nonsense
practices" in literature across periods and countries, in the conviction that
insights can be gained from these juxtapositions. In most cases, we are
dealing with linguistic nonsense, but in a few instances the nonsense
operates at the higher level of the interpretation of reality on the part of the
subject-or of the impossibility thereof.
After the Introduction by Giuseppe Antonelli, which addresses the
question of the historical rationale of nonsense, and places the Italian
contribution within the European context, the book is subdivided into five
sections, which are partly chronologically and partly thematically based.
While we hope that readers will be drawn to trace their own pathway
through the essays offered here, some connections and recurring ideas
came to our minds with particular force.
In relation to the medieval and early modem period, one major issue
was how the representation of nonsense could serve as an identifier of the
dividing line between a "medieval" and a "modern" way of thought-the
two terms being intended in a descriptive rather than strictly chronological
sense. In fact, a view of nonsense as the outward sign of a theologically
and ethically faulty attitude is exemplified, in our first section, not only by
Dante, but also by sixteenth-century English morality plays.
Simon Gilson's analysis, in the first chapter, concentrates on the
response of Dante's early commentators to Pluto's notorious line in
Inferno 7:1, and on what this reveals about the commentators' differing
cultural positions. One shared tendency is the attempt to translate Pluto's
exclamation into organized speech, thus undermining its expres ive force;
Preface Nonsense and Other Senses xi
X
. Zl strong emotive element in the the linguistic devices deployed in these poems, and their relationship with
( in findmg · of pained
however commentators conciJ ly as an expre 10n similar genres, and concludes that it is the interruption of logical discourse
1
line which comes across verY c earl ··cal and ethical issue, often by means of these formal elements, rather than any specifically
• .11e theo og • f' d ho
astonishment Interestingly v· . . ~ by Dante s 1rst rea ers, w "nonsensical" contents, that identifies these as nonsense genres.
. . . . IS lgnorev h . f
mentioned in modern cntlClsJ1l• . of the t ree mstances o Our next two chapters are concerned with forms of nonsense in early
also avoid comparati.v e d1·s cuss,on dv, t.n ln.;~e rno 7 • In.;~e rno .3 1 • and modern France. In her essay, Barbara C. Bowen identifies four categories
. the Come .r Pri · • 1ews on
incomprehensible language 10 b reference to SClan S V of nonsensical language within the books of the Gargantua and Pantagruel
jlOWS OW . I b h' d th
Paradiso 7 . However • Gilson s S to d'I StlD· t:a> uish the .r atwna e de. mb . e saga: the commingling of French and Latin (or Latinate) language;
"vox" and its articulation helP occurrence 5 • the one 1. 0 the PIa rak i tso . emthg deliberately ambiguous or Sibylline French, or nonsense which looks like
different modalities of the three . ..ctures wh1ch are ac ng m e sen e; made-up words; made-up languages. Although a more serious
rdenng strv
characterized by semantically 0 satirical purpose can be detected in several of the cases taken into
infernal instances _.,.,ent seem to have acted as a consideration, we are ultimately urged to relish their sheer comic
. -leW TeStruv . I I 0 .
Two passages from the !~ 'dl of nonsens1ca anguage. n.e IS effectiveness, since this would have been the driving force behind the
1
Particular put down on any fo(fnll eo'sf ssp·e eeC J....•,, to five • intelligibleh worhd s mth 1 author's deployment of these linguistic practices.
St. Paul's exhortation to limit 0 . Gilson s essay. T e ot er, e Hugh Roberts's chapter focuses on the nonsensical prologues of
Corinthians 14, and is referre.d tOM 1a0t welmwo .t-2. is menu.o ne d ~. ~ El1' sa b et.t a seventeenth-century French comedian Bruscambille, which were used to
indictment of idle language 1fl · .,arly modern English morahty silence the boisterous crowds of the first public theatre in France before
Tarantino's discussion of n.O fvl oeknesde 1.m 0 "0" ne of the ·e arh·e 1st aMn d km' ods t the main play was performed. Roberts addresses issues related to the form
drama as being explicitly 1fl th fifteenth-century P ay an m · of Bruscambille's galimatias as a deliberate language game couched in
aradigmatic examples of the genre, e n the late morality plays of
P focuses 0 . d · th terms of free-association imaginings, seeking to establish whether it is
TWairlalinatmin oW'sa gaenra laynsdi so, nh tohweierv eIJf5•e o. f tra df 'l tl· '0flnSa l atnh de oo 1o f gt1rcaa d 11' t·1 o0cntan1 n feo ro mns oef Rmoobree rtcsl ossoeulyn drse laa tendo teto offo rwmasr noinfg l oawga ionrs th ibgoht hc uthlteu rien.t eArpt rethtae tisvaem aen dti mthee,
auon o s• • h •
one hand, such as the classifiC While reference to t e 1o~er teleological fallacy in the study of nonsense texts, whereby these are either
dramatic entertainment on tl1e other. _,.,t religion, the latter are be10g suspected of hiding some higher meaning, or are seen as precursors of
the Protest<V· . b d
trengthens the credentials of- ' Jllan.if esta 0·0ns of the ev1l tof ' be re udtt e - t more modern, and therefore "more important" literary forms.
evoked as linguistic and visu;:v · · a us some of the 10est an mos It is interesting that both Tarantino and Roberts document the use of
from gJVlneo
we
which does not prevent Wag~( moralitY genre. nonsense speeches as different kinds of introductory piece in relation to
exten ive nonsense passages 1J'I . . · drama. Although the investigation of specific lines of diffusion of
, fonouncements on rauona 11ty m
Like everything else • even .S. et. sPuabuj. e Icst ePv~ to a. c h.a nge o f perspec t'1 ve 1b2Y · pnloanyseedn bey eoleraml etnratsn scmains siboen -triinc ktyhe- ncoat el eoafs tR ebneaciasu saen coe f ctuhletu rger ewaet pfeaerlt
human communication could "' Connthians, name 1Y verse ·
1 that Giuseppe Antonelli's call for greater efforts in thi direction is
emphasizing a different passl.lSh~s hf ru~•~m gs of the world to conffo undd tthh e particularly justified (see the Introduction below). 1 One of the results of
"But God hath chosen the to0 h' as of the world to con oun e
this kind of comparative investigation across different periods and
we weak t meo · · 1 · f the
wise· and God hath chosen s mess•aruc reva uat10n o
thing, s which are mighty". A •..•.·, 0re o.r h1e 5f course found 1· ts parad 1· gmat·tc countries could be that of problematizing Noel Malcolm's claim that "the
apparently foolish or nonsensi·C al (.w hlC. . 0l v mark s th e d1'f 1• erence be t ween
text in Erasmus's Praise of FO 1/y) 1m.p 1I Cnlt. .,dJ those 1• 0 Se ctw. n .1.
the texts discussed in our secoJ'I d secuon ckue• some c1 a 1· m to be cons1' d ere d at 1 In the case of the nonsense speech being used by the Vice in Tudor plays as an
We begin with a genre whicb may: belangelo Zaccarello's chapter introductory self-advertisement and by Bruscambille as a preamble to other forms
of dramatic entertainment in early seventeenth-century France, one may be
the origin of European nonsen e. f •c ~h-century frottole and cognate
and fi teenv• . . I I tempted to see a missing link in the record of a payment made at Bungay in 1566
deals with Italian fourteenth~ e poems ar..,. . charactenzed by a parucu ·a r Y "to Kelsaye, the vyce, for his pastyme before the plaie, and after the playe, both
"extra-canonical" genres. TheS . elements. Zaccarello exarrunes
n-semantlc daies, ij"' (Chambers 1903, 2:343; cf. Happe 1981, 25).
trong emphasis on formal, n°
xii Preface Nonsense and Other Senses xiii
origins of English nonsense" were fundamentally literary and period- authors (most noticeably the absence, in Kafka, of a framing world
specific (cf. Malcolm 1997). . . . providing a paradigm for normality), Allan identifies a common vision
In reading Shakespeare alongstde his predecessors m e~ly mode~n based on recurrent "ruptures of logic". He discusses Kafka's contacts with
English drama one is struck by two things (besides the obvJOu~ leap m the philosophical milieu of contemporary Prague, underlining the
artistic quality): the high degree of continuity in forms and matenals; .a~d relevance of Alex ius Meinong' s analysis of the equal treatment of fantastic
Shakespeare's revolutionarily modem outlook. It is the latter character~suc and real objects in language, and how this philosopher's thought could "be
that he most fundamentally shares with the much more openly rebeUtous used to map the paradoxical worlds of both Carroll and Kafka".
figure of Giordano Bruno, whose philosophical dialogues were published Willard Bohn highlights how Apollinaire's "nonsense", as expressed
in England some fifteen to twenty years before the appearance of the great in his "Quelconqueries", derives from a heightened perception of the
Shakespearean tragedies. Most significantly for us, an important part of
banalities of everyday life coupled with that of the artistic value of
that shared outlook was a sense of the often paradoxical relationship
ordinary objects. Bohn discusses Apollinaire's special brand of offbeat
between "truth" and accepted discourse. humour, which is linked to his aesthetic of surprise, offering examples
Accordingly, Hilary Gatti's chapter uses a parallel with the figure of
alongside an elucidation of the origin of some of the more curious images
Momus in Giordano Bruno to highlight the special function of the
and expressions, and he shows how Apollinaire's attempt to liberate the
Shakespearean Fool as conveyor of a truth that cannot find a place within
language of poetry from traditional poetic constraints is to be seen as
the confmes of ordinary political discourse. Thus the Fool's apparent "doubly subversive".
nonsense reveals itself to be "sense in reverse", a form of knowledge more
One recurring theme which applies especially, though certainly not
directly allied to the laws of rationality and nature than certain pervert~d exclusively, to the modernist period is how nonsense and absurdist forms
social and political constructs. The Fool is thus able to become an actor m
of expression become a favourite artistic modality in a politically or
the establishment of a Truth seen as unfolding in time and participating in
socially oppressive reality. On the one hand, this puts in place a mirroring
an eternal "play of vicissitude". The latter part of Gatti's essay deals with
strategy reproducing the deforming effect of pressure on the social
the cryptic prophecy speech by the Fool, which is only found in the 1623
environment. On the other, as was also discussed in the case of King Lear,
Folio edition of King Lear, as another kind of speaking "as if in a game".
absurdist speech paradoxically becomes the only sane form of response to
The relationship between frottole and prophecy is also part of the
a world which has intrinsically lost its sanity. In analyzing Dada's use of
analysis carried out in Zaccarello's chapter, and it may be worth
nonsense in response to the catastrophe of World War I, Stephen Forcer
investigating the points of contact and specular oppositions between
looks at Dada's output as texts characterized by a "polyvalent quality",
nonsense and prophecy, i.e. between a prominently "sub-real" and a
and finds layers of textual meaning beneath the insi ted claim of
prominently "hyper-real" form of discourse.2 One literary image. (cle~Iy "signifying nothing", as well as a ludic attitude revelling in the metalogical
alluded to by Rabelais-see chapter 4) may serve as a useful startmg pomt
capabilities of language. Indeed, Dada's "meaninglessness" can then be
in this respect: that of the Sibyl in Aeneid 3 writing her oracle on leaves
seen to offer a "half-way" solution between the inadequacy of
which end up scattered, turning the ardently sought-after truth into
conventional speech and complete silence.
(apparent) nonsense. The expressive capabilities of nonsense are also stressed in Magnus
Klaue's chapter, which discusses the influence of Fritz Mauthner's
Surreal modes of discourse are the subject of our third section, devoted
Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache (1901-2) on the poets of the German
to modernist nonsense. Their connection with what many would regard as
avant-garde. Mauthner highlighted how nonsense and absurdity can help
"nonsense proper" is highlighted by Neil Allan, who lists a series of
produce a "mystical" language, emancipated from the constraints of
parallel situations experienced by Carroll's Alice and Kafka's
conventionality, and Klaue shows the importance for early twentieth
protagonists. While stressing throughout the difference between the two
century German poetry of the contrast between the "mechanization" of
language and a utopian view of its mystical freedom.
2 A further element which may then appear in the light of a "missing link" could be Julia Genz's contribution also reads an aspect of early twentieth
the conjunction of nonsense and prophecy in the speech of the Vice, Haphazard, in century German literature in philosophical terms, though with reference to
the anonymous play Appius and Virginia (1567).
xiv Preface Nonsense and Other Senses
XV
a later thinker, as she applies the categories of "the ban" and "the tate of Romantics' faith in its ultimate capacity to relate to reality, especially
exception" recently explored by Italian philosopher G!orgio Agamben to through its affective and emotional significance.
an analysis of the interaction of banality and nonsense .m the w~rk of. Ku.rt Although rooted in Victorian England, Lear's model branched out far
Schwitters. This allows Genz to explore the specific relatiOnship m and wide, as is demonstrated, for instance, in Sakari Katajamaki's
Schwitters between abstract art and a conservative aesthetics, as the banal diachronic and synchronic analysis of the Finnish limerick. After tracing
elements in Schwitters's works, and indeed in other avant-garde art, the history of this poetic form, from its arrival from Sweden in the 1920s
interact dialectically with the "feudal" order of the work of art itself. to the appearance of the specifically Finnish genre of the "rimelick" in
Staying within the same literary period, but moving to a different 200 l, Katajamiiki describes how the Limerick's basic structures were
continent as well as to a different genre, Alisa Freedman's essay deals adapted to the prosodic characteristics of the Finnish language, in
with the third element in ero, guro, nansensu (erotic, grotesque, nonsense), accordance with "the genre's general tendency towards transformation and
terms which identified types of literary and visual artefacts portraying self-reflection".
aspects of Tokyo life at a time of economic and soci~l transformat!on. This With Florian Mussgnug's chapter the question of the referential
kind of artistic production exposed the absurdity of the times by capability of nonsense again looms large, though we move away from
highlighting a series of incongruous scenes within the realistic background Victorian poetry to a different time, place, and medium. The widespread
of the life of the salarymen, an emerging class of mid-level corporate assumption that the writings of Italian novelist Giorgio Manganelli (1922-
workers. In particular, the chapter focuses on the novels and short stories J 990) are based entirely on the principle of the self-referentiality of art is
of Asahara Rokuro (1895-1977), one of the co-founders of the New Art supported by the author's own literary manifesto on "Literature as Lie",
School, a short-lived movement most directly associated with modernist which reveals a fascination with nonsense as an antidote to the ideological
nansensu literature. tyranny of common sense. However, Mussgnug argues, on the one hand,
that radical views of language and art as totally self-referential are
One of the questions raised in Antonelli's Introduction is how the label intrinsically flawed, and, on the other hand, that the thematic dimension
"nonsense" is being stretched by-well, critical works like the present remains an important element in Manganelli's works. This chapter
volume. In fact, our Section 4 does deal directly with the Victorian consequently advocates a more balanced approach to the study of this
manifestations of the genre, and with some of its most "legitimate" and
author, based on both formal and thematic principles.
recognizable offspring across a fairly wide geographical and chronological The next two chapters in this section are devoted to two other late
spectrum.3 In the section's first chapter, however, the focus is ~till on twentieth-century authors whose foregrounding of the ludic aspect in their
"nonsense" as a label: here Marijke Boucherie discusses how th1 word
work is rooted in their general view of the relationship between literature
became an autonomous critical term after the success of Edward Lear's and life. Born of mixed Italian and British parentage, Fosco Maraini
eponymous work, and examines the paradox of a literary production which continued to cross cultural divides throughout his life, ftr t making his
invites a critical approach that uses a term it has itself helped to propagate.
name as a travel writer. While at the same time reflecting on the general
Boucherie also argues that, despite its intuitions about the subversive
issue of the translation of humour, Loredana Polezzi shows how
potentiality of language, Victorian nonsense literature preserves the
Maraini's nonsense, which the author called "metasemantic poetry", could
be viewed as an attempt at "intercultural translation". In this way,
Maraini's production, like Dada's nonsense, seeks to bridge the gap
between the untenability of conventional discourse and the purely unsaid
3 The section title, "Take care of the sounds", derives from a series of
(because unsayable), thus affirming, in Polezzi's words, "the power of
(mis)appropriations, being a reversal of the injunction by Alice's Duchess to "Take
care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves", which in tum is a nonsense as an interpretative paradigm capable of mediating difference
parodic adaptation of a well-known English proverb, "Take care of the pence, and without essentializing it". This common point of arrival in the analyses of
the pounds will take care of themselves" (cf. Lecercle 1994, 123ff.). The Duchess Polezzi and Forcer highlights an important universal element in both
was also echoing the Latin saying "rem tene, verba sequentur''-a formula whose modernist and post-modern nonsen e.
own reversal, with its potential for defining the poetic process in general, has
enjoyed a certain fortune (see, in chapter 14, Katajamiilci 2005).
X Preface Nonsense and Other Senses xi
however commentators concur in finding a strong emotive element in the the linguistic devices deployed in these poems, and their relationship with
line which comes across very clearly as an expression of pained similar genres, and concludes that it is the interruption of logical discourse
asto,nishment. Interestingly the theological and ethical issue, often by means of these formal elements, rather than any specifically
mentioned in modern criticism, is ignored by Dante's first readers, who "nonsensical" contents, that identifies these as nonsense genres.
also avoid comparative discussion of the three instances of Our next two chapters are concerned with forms of nonsense in early
incomprehensible language in the Comedy, in Inferno 7 ~ I~fer;to ~ 1, and modern France. In her essay, Barbara C. Bowen identifies four categories
Paradiso 7. However, Gilson shows how reference to Pnsctan s vtews on of nonsensical language within the books of the Gargantua and Pantagruel
"vox" and its articulation helps to distinguish the rationale behind the saga: the commingling of French and Latin (or Latinate) language;
different modalities of the three occurrences, the one in the Paradiso being deliberately ambiguous or Sibylline French, or nonsense which looks like
characterized by semantically ordering structures which are lacking in the sense; made-up words; made-up languages. Although a more serious
infernal instances. satirical purpose can be detected in several of the cases taken into
Two passages from the New Testament seem to have acted as a consideration, we are ultimately urged to relish their sheer comic
particular put down on any form of idle or no~sen~ical .l~guage. On.e is effectiveness, since this would have been the driving force behind the
St. Paul's exhortation to limit one's speech to five mtelhgtble words m 1 author's deployment of these linguistic practices.
Corinthians 14, and is referred to in Simon Gilson's essay. The other, the Hugh Roberts's chapter focuses on the nonsensical prologues of
indictment of idle language in Matthew 12, is mentioned in Elisabetta seventeenth-century French comedian Bruscambille, which were used to
Tarantino's discussion of nonsense in early modern English morality silence the boisterous crowds of the first public theatre in France before
drama as being explicitly invoked in one of the earliest and most the main play was performed. Roberts addresses issues related to the form
paradigmatic examples of the genre, the fifteenth-century pl~y Mankind. of Bruscambille's galimatias as a deliberate language game couched in
Tarantino's analysis, however, focuses on the late morahty plays of terms of free-association imaginings, seeking to establish whether it is
William Wager and on their use of traditional theological doctrine on the more closely related to forms of low or high culture. At the same time,
one hand, such as the classification of sins, and of traditional forms of Roberts sounds a note of warning against both the interpretative and the
dramatic entertainment on the other. While reference to the former teleological fallacy in the study of nonsense texts, whereby these are either
strengthens the credentials of the Protestant religion, the latter are being suspected of hiding some higher meaning, or are seen as precursors of
evoked as linguistic and visual manifestations of the evil to be rebutted more modern, and therefore "more important" literary forms.
which does not prevent Wager from giving us some of the finest and most It is interesting that both Tarantino and Roberts document the use of
extensive nonsense passages in the morality genre. nonsense speeches as different kinds of introductory pieces in relation to
drama. Although the investigation of specific lines of diffu ion of
Like everything else, even St. Paul's pronouncements on rationality in
nonsense elements can be tricky-not least because of the great part
human communication could be subjected to a change of perspective by
played by oral transmission-in the case of Renaissance culture we feel
emphasizing a different passage from 1 Corinthians, namely verse 12:
that Giuseppe Antonelli's call for greater efforts in this direction is
"But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the
particularly justified (see the Introduction below).' One of the results of
wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the
this kind of comparative investigation across different periods and
things which are mighty". A more or less messianic revaluation of the
countries could be that of problematizing Noel Malcolm's claim that "the
apparently foolish or nonsensical (which of course found its paradigmatic
text in Erasmus's Praise of Folly) implicitly marks the difference between
the texts discussed in our second section and those in Section l.
We begin with a genre which may stake some claim to be considered at 1 In the case of the nonsense speech being used by the Vice in Tudor plays as an
introductory self-advertisement and by Bruscambille as a preamble to other forms
the origin of European non ense. Michelangelo Zaccarello's chapter
of dramatic entertainment in early seventeenth-century France, one may be
deals with Italian fourteenth- and fifteenth-century frottole and cognate
tempted to see a missing link in the record of a payment made at Bungay in 1566
"extra-canonical" genres. These poems are characterized by a particularly
"to Kelsaye, the vyce, for his pastyme before the plaie, and after the playe, both
strong emphasis on formal, non-semantic elements. Zaccarello examines
daies, ij"' (Chambers 1903, 2:343; cf. Happe 1981, 25).
'/
xvi Preface Non ense and Other Senses
xvii
Like Maraini, Michael Ende is not known principally as a nonsense elements above and beyond the linguistic ones. By letting his audience
writer, being most often categorized as a fantasy author or writer of actively seek to make sense of absurd situations, Havel demands that they
children's literature. In her chapter, however, Rebekka Putzke so:ess~s shake off the benumbing passivity that characterizes life under a
the importance of Ende's use of nonsense both as a central concern m h1s totalitarian regime.
works (particularly in his poems) and as "ornamental nonsense" within his
novels. This aspect is given further prominence by being related to .other These, then, are our "scattered leaves", which we shall now allow to
important characteristics of Ende's work, such as the emphasis on speak for themselves. It i our conviction that at least one pattern will
wordplay and on the idea of the "game". emerge from their being assembled here: that what di tinguishes literary
nonsense, the speech of the literary "fool", as opposed to that of the
Our final section explicitly addresses an issue which has emerged ~an idiot-what makes it in fact a Ia t-ditch attempt to snatch order from the
important Leitmotif throughout the present volume: the use of nonsen. ~cal jaws of chaos-is that it should be somehow deliberate, and regulated (cf.
or absurdist forms of writing as an instrument for social and political Lecercle 1994, 68, 204, and passim). It is this kind of post-Derridean
critique. In an important departure from a formalist view of nonsense, such retrieval of choice as the defining element in semantic transactions which
as that adopted in his own seminal study on The Philosophy of Nonsense, is perhaps the most important insight bequeathed by the study of nonsense
Jean-Jacques Lecercle draws on different traditions of interpretations of
to the analysis of poetry and literature as a whole. It may certainly be that
nonsense in order to investigate the relationship between nonsense and n'est pas fou qui veut (Lecercle 1994, 115). But in the case of artistic
politics, offering two case studies: Gianni Rodari's Marxist filastrocche, non ense, as in any other semantic realm, il faut bien le vouloir.
examined in the light of Antonio Grarnsci's theory of language as
simultaneously reflecting and constructing the speaker's (or reader's)
Elisabelta Tarantino
worldview and their perception of what constitutes "common sen e"; and
the contrast between Mrs Sherwood's The History of the Fairchild Family
Works Cited
and Lewis Carroll's Alice, drawing on Raymond Williams's concept of the
structure of feeling which is embodied in all texts, including nonsense
Chambers, E. K. 1903. The Mediaeval Stage. 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon.
ones.
Happe, Peter. 1981. '"The Vice' and the Popular Theatre, 1547-80." 13-31
Federico Appel's chapter also deals with a beloved Italian children's
in Poetry and Drama 1570-1700. Ed. A. Coleman and A. Hammond.
author, though we step back some forty years in time, as he discusses a
London: Methuen.
series of cartoons published in a children's newspaper in Italy in the
Lecercle, Jean-Jacques. 1994. Philosophy of Nonsense. The Intuitions of
1920s. Each episode of the Vispa Teresa series was based on the parodic
Victorian Nonsense Literature. London: Routledge.
repetition of the events in a well-known nineteenth-ceo~~ childr~n's
Malcolm, Noel. 1997. The Origins of English Nonsense. London:
poem, with the intent of emptying the model of its morahstl.c m~anmg.
HarperCollins.
The di cu sion of Sergio Tofano's cartoons allows Appel to Identify the
close connection existing between nonsense and an intertextual and
parodic mode, and between nonsense and the critique of bourgeois society
in Italy in the 1920s, a trait which is further intensified by some of the
authors in question having belonged to avant-garde movements.
The connection between an absurdist mode of writing and politics is
particularly strong and explicit in the case discussed in the final chapter of
this volume, in which Jane Duarte examines the nonsensical or absurdist
a peel of Vaclav Havel's plays a a trategy for coping with life under a
totalitarian regime. The non en e in the e plays is then seen a a form of
"inferential communication", in which meaning depends on ostensive
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
We should like to thank the Italian Cultural Institute in London and the
Department of Italian of the University of Warwick for helping to fund the
conference from which the present volume has derived; we should also
like to thank the British Academy and the University of Warwick HRC for
financial help towards both the conference and the book publication costs.
In relation to the conference, we are grateful to Ingrid De Smet and
Helmut Schmitz, from the Warwick French and German Departments
respectively, for helping organize and run the academic side of business,
and to Sue Dibben (conference management and administration), Giorgia
Pigato and Josie Williams for help with the practical running. We should
also like to thank all our speakers, and especially our keynote contributors,
Professors Bowen, Gatti, Lecercle and Zaccarello, for their exceptional
willingness to engage with topic and periods at times very distant from
their own specialism, thus ensuring an exciting and constant exchange of
views and information. We should particularly like to record how
Professor Lecercle was as effective and inspirational a presence at our
conference as he has proved to be for many of the contributors to this
book.
In relation to the latter, for help with translations and revisions our
thanks also go to Alisa Freedman, Simon Gilson, Patrick Kincaid, Devin
Martini, Martin McLaughlin, Kate Mitchell, Leila Mukhida, and Liz
Wren-Owens.
Last but not least, a big thank you to Carol Koulikourdi, Amanda
Millar and Soucin Yip-Sou of Cambridge Scholars Publishing for their
speed and efficiency.
Copyright Notices
We gratefully acknowledge permission to quote from material
belonging to the following copyright holders:
In Chapter 2, the Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana fondata da
Giovanni Treccani for the material from Carla Casagrande and Silvana
Vecchio, I peccati della lingua.