By Dr Oliver Tearle

'Jabberwocky' is perchance the virtually famous nonsense poem in all of English language literature. Although the poem was offset published in Lewis Carroll's novelThrough the Looking Glass in 1871, the first stanza was actually written and printed by Carroll in 1855 in the little journalMischmasch, which Carroll (real name Charles Dodgson) compiled to entertain his family. Below is 'Jabberwocky' (sometimes erroneously called 'The Jabberwocky'), followed by a brief analysis of its meaning. 'Nonsense' literature information technology may exist, but let's see if we can make some sense of the glorious nonsense.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

'Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!'

He took his vorpal sword in hand:
Long time the manxome foe he sought—
And then rested he by the Tumtum tree,
And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,
The Jabberwock, with optics of flame,
Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,
And burbled equally it came!

One, 2! One, two! And through and through
The vorpal bract went snicker-snack!
He left information technology expressionless, and with its head
He went galumphing dorsum.

'And hast yard slain the Jabberwock?
Come up to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
He chortled in his joy.

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did ringlet and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Jabberwocky: a summary

In terms of its plot, 'Jabberwocky' might be described as nonsense literature'southward answer to the epic Anglo-Saxon poemBeowulf: what Christopher Booker, in his vast and fascinating The Seven Basic Plots: Why Nosotros Tell Stories, calls an 'overcoming the monster' story.

A hero leaves home and goes out into the world in guild to face downwards some evil; after encountering difficulties and tests of his bravery, he is triumphant and vanquishes his foe; then he comes home again. It's a story told once again and once again Jabberwockyin literature, from Beowulf toThe Lord of the Rings. Of grade it is as well an case of what we would now call the fantasy genre: supernatural or fictional monsters or creatures characteristic (namely, in Carroll's poem, the Jubjub Bird, the Bandersnatch, and, of course, the Jabberwock itself).

The structure of Carroll'southward poem echoes this bones plot structure ('overcoming the monster') in two ways: through adopting the carol metre traditionally used for poems telling such a story (that is, the four-line stanza, or quatrain form), and through repeating the opening stanza in the endmost stanza, suggesting the hero's return home later his adventure.

Jabberwocky: an analysis

'Jabberwocky', in one sense, takes us back to the very earliest 'English language' poems, such as the cracking Anglo-Saxon ballsy verse form Beowulf, in which the titular hero faces the fearsome monster Grendel (and, after that, faces the wrath of Grendel'due south mother besides as a mighty dragon). Such stories of 'overcoming the monster' are as old as English literature itself, and then, and at that place are other myths associated with England – such as the story of the patron saint of England, St George, slaying the dragon – which employ this motif.

Another useful way of interpreting 'Jabberwocky' is through considering the oral fairy-tale tradition. Fairy tales tend to use like tropes, character types, and plot lines, equally Vladimir Propp demonstrated in his Morphology of the Folk Tale. So a hero oft absents himself or herself from home (much as the intrepid hero of 'Jabberwocky' has to caput off to face the Jabberwock), and has to confront a villain or monster (the Jabberwock), earlier triumphing and returning dwelling house. These elements are evidently nowadays in Carroll'south verse form.

Merely is this where the master appeal of the poem lies, when and then much of the linguistic communication Carroll uses is, conspicuously, nonsense?

Afterward all, as well equally being an case of a fantasy quest, the poem is too a masterpiece of linguistic inventiveness: every stanza is a feast of neologisms – new words, coinages, nonsense formations. Several of them have fifty-fifty entered common usage: 'chortle' (a alloy of 'chuckle' and 'snort') and 'galumph' (meaning to move in a clumsy way) are both used past many people who probably have no idea that we have Lewis Carroll to thank for them. ('Mimsy', too, is often credited to Carroll – though it actually existed prior to the poem.)

Consider that opening stanza:

'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe:
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outgrabe.

Consider Carroll's use of (invented) words in this stanza. What are 'toves', and why are they 'slithy'? What does 'slithiness' (is that a discussion?) look or experience like? The same with 'mimsy'. Noam Chomsky'due south ground-breaking piece of work in linguistics surrounding children's ability to larn a linguistic 'grammer' demonstrated that even if we don't know the meaning of a word, we can frequently deduce what kind of word information technology is: i.due east. we know 'mimsy' is an adjective, or describing-word, fifty-fifty though we don't fully know what 'mimsiness' is.

Carroll is using both 'slithy' and 'mimsy' as portmanteau words: slithy, for instance, is a blend of slimy + lithe, while mimsy suggests miserable + flimsy. Another term for a portmanteau word is, in fact, a blend, and some linguists prefer to use the give-and-take blend. But the term 'portmanteau' came about considering, after Alice has encountered the verse form 'Jabberwocky' in Through the Looking-Glass, and puzzled over the significant of these unfamiliar words, she meets Humpty Dumpty, who tells her, when she quotes the higher up stanza:

'That's enough to begin with,' Humpty Dumpty interrupted: 'there are enough of difficult words there. "Brillig" ways four o'clock in the afternoon — the time when you begin broiling things for dinner.'

'That'll do very well,' said Alice: 'and "slithy"?'

'Well, "slithy" means "lithe and slimy". "Lithe" is the same every bit "active". Y'all encounter it'southward similar a portmanteau — at that place are two meanings packed up into one word.'

A portmanteau was, in Victorian times, a instance or bag for carrying clothing while travelling; the give-and-take is from the French meaning literally 'carry the cloak'.

And so, every bit well equally existence a fine piece of imaginative literature, 'Jabberwocky' likewise demonstrates a central principle of linguistic communication: what linguists call productivity oropen-endedness, namely the phenomenon whereby users of a linguistic communication tin incessantly create new words or phrases. Equally Noam Chomsky's theory of a Universal Grammar shows, users of a language demonstrate an innate linguistic inventiveness from a immature age, and this is how children are able to choice upwards a new language relatively apace: they learn not merely past acquiring knowledge, simply by using an in-built talent for spotting how words are put together to form meaningful utterances. If something is both lithe andslimy, why not combine the two words – both their sounds and their meanings – to createslithy?

Here is a cursory glossary of what the diverse nonsense words in 'Jabberwocky' mean. As poems get, this 1 must have i of the highest rates of neologism-to-words of all archetype poems in the English language. Perhaps surprisingly, many of them have found their way into theOxford English language Dictionary; we accept put (OED) after those words which have an entry in the lexicon.

Jabberwock: the monster (with jaws and claws – we aren't given much else by way of clarification) (OEDwith the extended meaning 'incoherent or nonsensical expression')

brillig: the time when people brainstorm broiling things for dinner (effectually 4pm)

slithy: lithe and slimy (OED)

toves: a (fictional) species of badger with horns like a stag and which lives predominantly on cheese (OED)

curlicue: twirl around like a curlicue (actually predates Carroll)

gimble: diameter holes like a gimlet

wabe: the wet side of a loma soaked past the rain (OED)

mimsy: unhappy or miserable (OED)

borogoves: (fictional) type of bird

mome: grave or solemn (OED)

raths: (fictional) turtle with a mouth similar a shark and a smooth green body; lives on swallows and oysters  (OED)

outgrabe: emitted a strange dissonance (past tense of, presumably,outgribe) (OED)

Jubjub bird: 'An imaginary bird of a ferocious, drastic and occasionally charitable nature, noted for its excellence when cooked' (OED)

frumious: so angry or furious as to be fuming (OED)

Bandersnatch: 'A fleet, furious, fuming, fabulous creature, of unsafe propensities, immune to bribery and too fast to abscond from; afterwards, used vaguely to suggest any creature with such qualities' (OED)

vorpal: (of a sword) corking and deadly (OED)

manxome: fearsome or monstrous (OED)

Tumtum tree: a fictional tree

uffish: huffish (OED)

whiffling: blowing in puffs or gusts of air (this word predates Carroll)

tulgey: thick, dumbo, and dark (OED)

burbled: to speak in murmurs (OED)

snicker-snack: with a snipping or clicking sound (OED)

galumphing: to gallop in triumph (OED)

beamish: radiant or shining (this word predates Carroll)

frabjous: fair and joyous; fabulous (OED)

chortled: chuckled and snorted (OED)

For more data almost what individual words of the poem hateful, see Humpty Dumpty's explanation of 'Jabberwocky' fromThrough the Looking-Glass. Go along your odyssey into the earth of nonsense poetry with our word of Edward Lear's 'The Owl and the Pussycat'.

Well-nigh Lewis Carroll

Lewis Carroll (1832-98) is celebrated effectually the globe as one of the peachy purveyors of 'literary nonsense': his booksAlice's Adventures in Wonderland(1865) andThrough the Looking-Drinking glass (1871) accept entertained endless readers since they were published most 150 years ago. For many, the name 'Lewis Carroll' is synonymous with children'due south literature.

Simply 'Lewis Carroll' was really a man named Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a mathematician at Christ Church, Oxford. Every bit such, he led something of a double life: to the readers of hisAlicebooks he was Lewis Carroll, while to the world of mathematics and to his colleagues at the University of Oxford he was (Reverend) Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, a man who formed his pen name past reversing his starting time ii names ('Charles Lutwidge' became 'Lewis Carroll').

There is a famous anecdote about Carroll and Queen Victoria. Victoria enjoyedAlice's Adventures in Wonderlandand then much that she requested a starting time edition of Carroll's next book. Carroll duly sent her a copy of the side by side volume he published – a mathematical work with the exciting titleAn Elementary Treatise on Determinants. Unfortunately, similar most good anecdotes, this one isn't true, but the fact that it is often told highlights the oddness of Carroll's double life. Carroll, despite the radical nature of his nonsense fiction, was a conservative mathematician who resented and dismissed many of the new ideas emerging in mathematics during the nineteenth century.

Carroll was a shy man who suffered from a stammer throughout his life and from being deaf in one ear (the result of a fever he suffered from in childhood). Carroll identified himself with the Dodo inAlice'southward Adventures in Wonderland, leading some to propose (though it remains only a proffer) that this was considering of Carroll's ain difficulty in pronouncing his last name ('Exercise-Do', from Dodgson).

The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English language at Loughborough Academy. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers' Journeying Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste material Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

Image: Illustration for 'Jabberwocky' by John Tenniel, 1871; Wikimedia Commons.