"... And the mome raths outgrabe."

I remember my old Poetry 101 professor reading us "Jabberwocky" in class one day and pronouncing the last word with a long "e" at the end: "out-grah-bee."

I felt violated. I was sure, just so sure, that the poem I first read in my aunt's old college English Lit textbook (found old and moldy in my granny's basement when I was but 14) had as its last word "out-grabe" -- rhyming with ... . Huh?

And that was the point. Other than Lewis Carroll's "portmanteau" rhyme in the poem ("wabe"), there isn't much that rhymes with "outgrabe," no matter how you pronounce it.

Carroll once explained, humorously, his concept of the famous "portmanteau" words used in his poem. But, like the piece of furniture they're named for, they can serve a variety of uses.

Last year, when I started this blog, I wrote about how George Boole discovered a flaw in classic Aristotelian logic -- called (I think) the "existential fallacy." In short, the terms of a syllogism do not need to exist for the syllogism to function. They can be abstract symbols, hence the name "symbolic logic."

Carroll (as math professor Charles Lutwidge Dodgson) was a researcher in Boolean algebra, nonlinear geometry and similar topics. He made significant contributions to the academic literature on symbolic logic. And "Jabberwocky" is his (I think, successful) attempt to put some of those basic concepts into language.

The "portmanteau" words in "Jabberwocky" don't mean anything. (I believe Carroll's own definitions of the words are knowingly tongue-in-cheek.) They are true "nonsense" words, in the sense that they have no sense at all. Nor do they need to have any for the poem to make sense. In a sense.

If we are to examine those "interstices" of language I spoke of back then in the post on Boole, I think we need to more fully understand Carroll's accomplishment in "Jabberwocky."

BTW, the poem is satire. Just what it ridicules is what's important.

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Afternote (2/12/19): Dodgson stuck to linear geometry.

Throw me the ball! Ouch! Not that hard!

It was years ago I was reading something about Juvenal (I not only did not flunk Latin, I never took it *holds head in shame*). And this writer went on and on about how the word "satire" (the form for which ol' Juvvie was famouser than famous) may have come from a Latin word with two possible meanings: a word that meant either "a bowl of mixed fruit" or (by association) "a medley."

I have no idea whether any of that is accurate: you'd need to ask a true Latin scholar. But the notion stuck with me because of this: "satire" is a literary form where you throw out all the structured rhetorical categories, all the neatly clipped logic and the carefully considered ambiguities or ironies of the other classic forms.

And when you do that, you start making jokes. It's natural.

So, when we turn our thoughts to roguery (in the sense of "playful mischief"), it's only natural that we experiment.

But even then, we still have to think things through first.

More, next time.

A New Day

Change is good, right?

But I'm not going to change my contract with you, dear readers. It's just that, from now on, we're going to be learning together (sings: "... wherever we go-oooo!" *ends with old-school-vegas-floor-show flourish*).

We'll be exploring language, rhythm, rhyme and all sorts of related things, as we have all along.

But we're going to be leaving behind the classic stuff, and we'll be moving more toward the experimental.

So hang on ... !

And, stay tuned.

A New Name and a New Attitude!

Coming soon to a computer screen near you ... .

For All Clowns' Day

from “Metrical Feet”
by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Trochee trips from long to short;
From long to long in solemn sort
Slow Spondee stalks, strong foot!, yet ill able
Ever to come up with Dactyl's trisyllable.
Iambics march from short to long.
With a leap and a bound the swift Anapests throng.
One syllable long, with one short at each side,
Amphibrachys hastes with a stately stride --
First and last being long, middle short, Amphimacer
Strikes his thundering hoofs like a proud high-bred Racer.

This and much more at

http://emule.com/poetry