Overview

The Edinburgh Companion to Nonsense is the first comprehensive treatment of its subject across historical periods, languages, cultures, and theoretical frameworks. Written by scholars in a range of disciplines from philosophy to music as well as literary critics and linguists, it provides the first overview of nonsense as a vital dimension of human creativity, drawing on insights from theology to queer studies, from India to Russia, and from Ancient Greece to the late modernism of the twentieth century. Responding to a growing interest in nonsense within the academy and reflecting the diversity of understandings that the term inspires, this book aims to advance nonsense as a developing critical field, and to inspire new areas of research.

Full Product Details

Author:   Anna Barton (Professor of Nineteenth-Century Literature, University of Sheffield) ,  James Williams (Lecturer in English, University of York)
Publisher:   Edinburgh University Press
Imprint:   Edinburgh University Press
ISBN:  

9781399557382

ISBN 10:   1399557386
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   31 January 2026
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Paperback
Publisher's Status:   Forthcoming
Availability:   Not yet available  
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Language:   English

Table of Contents

AcknowledgementsList of Illustrations Introduction: Companionable Nonsense - Anna Barton and James Williams Part I: Notes towards a History of English Nonsense 1. Buba, Blictrix, Bufbaf: Medieval Theory and Practice of Nonsense - Jordan Kirk 2. ‘The Best Fooling’: Every Man Out of His Humour, Twelfth Night, and Early Modern English Nonsense Games - Rebecca Fall 3. Nonsense in the Age of Reason - Freya Johnston 4. ‘The Light of Sense | Goes Out’: Romantic Poetry and Victorian Nonsense Poetry - Peter Swaab 5. Victorian Nonsense and Its Kinships - Martin Dubois 6. Shady Pleasures: Modernist Nonsense - Noreen Masud 7. Mid-Century Nonsense and Destructive Mockery - Adam Piette Part II: Global Nonsenses 8. In Search of Ancient Greek Nonsense - Sara Chiarini 9. Traditional Moorings, Modern Practices: Indian Literary Nonsense - Sumanyu Satpathy 10. Signs and Wonders: Two Approaches to Nonsense in Russia - Jamie Rann 11. ‘What’s the French for fiddle-de-dee?’: Nonsense in French - Alexandra Lukes 12. Italian Nonsense: Tradition, Translation, Translocation, Transcodification (and a Trinity) - Alessandro Giammei Part III: Contexts and Connections 13. English ‘hibber-gibber’ and the ‘jargon of France’: Rabelaisian Nonsense in Translation - Hugh Roberts 14. Musical Foundations of Nonsense - Michael Heyman 15. Doubtful Girls and Silly Women: Nonsense and Gender - Anna Barton 16. Queer Nonsense: Query? - Hugh Haughton 17. Humans, and Other Nonsense Animals - Cassie Westwood 18. Nonsense Among the Philosophers - Michael Potter 19. ‘Word beyond Speech’: Nonsense and the Sacred - James Williams Notes on Contributors

Reviews

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. --Matthew Bevis, Keble College, Oxford University

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. -- Matthew Bevis, Keble College, Oxford University

Author Information

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.

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