Victorian Children's Literature - ENG 370 Resource Guide

A tradition of verse principally dating from the Victorian period, generally delivered in rhyming couplets, that relates the seemingly minor misdemeanors of children, acquiring its ruthless humour from the punishment or misfortune that befalls them. This is usually excessive and wildly out of proportion to the original transgression. Hilaire Belloc’s The Bad Child’s Book of Beasts (1896) and Cautionary Tales (1907) are the most celebrated, including Jim, who ran away from his nurse and was eaten by a Lion (‘And always keep a-hold of nurse / For fear of finding something worse’), and Matilda, who told lies and was burned to death.

Some consider nonsense a wide category that includes almost any verse that creates a fantastical world with its own rules, while others consider it a narrow category that includes only verse that disrupts the operations of language., typically by employing an abnormal syntax or invented words. Both these formulations describe many aspects of nonsense, and the two often overlap. E.g., Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky," an instance of nonsense verse that uses a largely invented vocabulary, is introduced in the context of Carroll's fantastical LookingGlass world: