"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by the English author and mathematician Lewis Carroll about the killing of a creature named "the Jabberwock". It was included in his 1871 novel Through the Looking-Glass, the sequel to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865). The book tells of Alice's adventures within the back-to-front world of the Looking-Glass world.
In an early scene in which she first encounters the chess piece characters White King and White Queen, Alice finds a book written in a seemingly unintelligible language. Realising that she is travelling through an inverted world, she recognises that the verses on the pages are written in mirror writing. She holds a mirror to one of the poems and reads the reflected verse of "Jabberwocky". She finds the nonsense verse as puzzling as the odd land she has passed into, later revealed as a dreamscape.
"Jabberwocky" is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English. Its playful, whimsical language has given English nonsense words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle".
Origin and publication
A decade before the publication of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and the sequel Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll wrote the first stanza to what would become "Jabberwocky" while in Croft-on-Tees, where his parents resided. It was printed in 1855 in Mischmasch, a periodical he wrote and illustrated for the amusement of his family. The piece, titled "Stanza of Anglo-Saxon Poetry", reads:
The stanza is printed first in faux-mediaeval lettering as a "relic of ancient Poetry" (in which þe is a form of the word the) and printed again "in modern characters". The rest of the poem was written during Carroll's stay with relatives at Whitburn, near Sunderland. The story may have been partly inspired by the local Sunderland area legend of the Lambton WormA Town Like Alice's (1997) Michael Bute Heritage Publications, SunderlandAlice in Sunderland (2007) Brian Talbot Dark Horse publications. and the tale of the Sockburn Worm.
The concept of nonsense verse was not original to Carroll, who would have known of chapbooks such as The World Turned Upside Down and stories such as "The Grand Panjandrum". Nonsense existed in Shakespeare's work and was well-known in the Brothers Grimm's fairytales, some of which are called lying tales or lügenmärchen.Carpenter (1985), 55–56 Biographer Roger Lancelyn Green suggested that "Jabberwocky" was a parody of the German ballad "The Shepherd of the Giant Mountains","Jabberwocky back to Old English: Nonsense, Anglo-Saxon and Oxford" by Lucas, Peter J. in Language History and Linguistic Modelling (1997) p503-520 Hudson, Derek (1977) Lewis Carroll: an illustrated biography. Crown Publishers, 76 which had been translated into English by Carroll's cousin Menella Bute Smedley in 1846.Martin Gardner (2000) The Annotated Alice. New York: Norton p 154, n. 42. Historian Sean B. Palmer suggests that Carroll was inspired by a section from Shakespeare's Hamlet, citing the lines: "The graves stood tenantless, and the sheeted dead / Did squeak and gibber in the Roman streets" from Act I, Scene i.Carroll makes later reference to the same lines from Hamlet Act I, Scene i in the 1869 poem "Phantasmagoria". He wrote: "Shakspeare I think it is who treats / Of Ghosts, in days of old, / Who 'gibbered in the Roman streets".
John Tenniel reluctantly agreed to illustrate the book in 1871, and his illustrations are still the defining images of the poem. The illustration of the Jabberwock may reflect the contemporary Victorian obsession with natural history and the fast-evolving sciences of palaeontology and geology. Stephen Prickett notes that in the context of Darwin and Mantell's publications and vast exhibitions of dinosaurs, such as those at the Crystal Palace from 1854, it is unsurprising that Tenniel gave the Jabberwock "the leathery wings of a pterodactyl and the long scaly neck and tail of a sauropod."Prickett, Stephen (2005) Victorian Fantasy Baylor University Press p80
Lexicon
Many of the words in the poem are playful nonce words of Carroll's own invention, without intended explicit meaning. When Alice has finished reading the poem, she gives her impressions:
This may reflect Carroll's intention for his readership; the poem is, after all, part of a dream. In later writings, he discussed some of his lexicon, commenting that he did not know the specific meanings or sources of some of the words; the linguistic ambiguity and uncertainty throughout both the book and the poem may largely be the point.
In Through the Looking-Glass, the character of Humpty Dumpty, in response to Alice's request, explains to her the nonsense words from the first stanza of the poem, but Carroll's personal commentary on several of the words differ from Humpty Dumpty's. For example, following the poem, a "rath" is described by Humpty Dumpty as "a sort of green pig". Carroll's notes for the original in Mischmasch suggest a "rath" is "a species of Badger" that "lived chiefly on cheese" and had smooth white hair, long hind legs, and short horns like a stag. The appendices to certain Looking Glass editions state that the creature is "a species of land turtle" that lived on swallows and oysters. Later critics added their own interpretations of the lexicon, often without reference to Carroll's own contextual commentary. An extended analysis of the poem and Carroll's commentary is given in the book The Annotated Alice by Martin Gardner.
In 1868, Carroll asked his publishers, Macmillan, "Have you any means, or can you find any, for printing a page or two in the next volume of Alice in reverse?" It may be that Carroll was wanting to print the whole poem in mirror writing. Macmillan responded that it would cost a great deal more to do, and this may have dissuaded him.
In the author's note to the Christmas 1896 edition of Through the Looking-Glass, Carroll writes, "The new words, in the poem Jabberwocky, have given rise to some differences of opinion as to their pronunciation, so it may be well to give instructions on that point also. Pronounce 'slithy' as if it were the two words, 'sly, thee': make the 'g' hard in 'gyre' and 'gimble': and pronounce 'rath' to rhyme with 'bath'."Carroll, Lewis (2005) Through the Looking Glass. Hayes Barton Press p. 4
In the Preface to The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll wrote, "[Let] me take this opportunity of answering a question that has often been asked me, how to pronounce 'slithy toves'. The 'i' in 'slithy' is long, as in 'writhe', and 'toves' is pronounced so as to rhyme with 'groves'. Again, the first "o" in "borogoves" is pronounced like the 'o' in 'borrow'. I have heard people try to give it the sound of the 'o' in 'worry'. Such is Human Perversity."
Possible interpretations of words
Bandersnatch: A swift moving creature with snapping jaws, capable of extending its neck. A "bander" was also an archaic word for a "leader", suggesting that a "bandersnatch" might be an animal that hunts the leader of a group. Beamish: Radiantly beaming, happy, cheerful. Although Carroll may have believed he had coined this word, usage in 1530 is cited in the Oxford English Dictionary. References the Oxford English Dictionary (1530). Borogove: Following the poem, Humpty Dumpty says: borogove' is a thin shabby-looking bird with its feathers sticking out all round, something like a live mop." In Mischmasch, borogoves are described differently: "An extinct kind of Parrot. They had no wings, beaks turned up, and made their nests under sun-dials: lived on veal." In Hunting of the Snark, Carroll says that the initial syllable of borogove is pronounced as in borrow rather than as in worry. Brillig: Following the poem, the character of Humpty Dumpty comments: Brillig' means four o'clock in the afternoon, the time when you begin broiling things for dinner." According to Mischmasch, it is derived from the verb to bryl or broil. Burbled: In a letter of December 1877, Carroll notes that "burble" could be a mixture of the three verbs 'bleat', 'murmur', and 'warble', although he did not remember creating it.Lewis Carroll, Letter to Maud Standen, December 1877 Chortled: "Combination of 'chuckle' and 'snort'." (OED) Frabjous: Possibly a blend of "fair", "fabulous", and "joyous". Definition from Oxford English Dictionary, credited to Lewis Carroll. Frumious: Combination of "fuming" and "furious". In the Preface to The Hunting of the Snark, Carroll comments, "[T]ake the two words 'fuming' and 'furious'. Make up your mind that you will say both words, but leave it unsettled which you will say first. Now open your mouth and speak. If your thoughts incline ever so little towards 'fuming', you will say 'fuming-furious'; if they turn, by even a hair's breadth, towards 'furious', you will say 'furious-fuming'; but if you have the rarest of gifts, a perfectly balanced mind, you will say 'frumious'." Galumphing: Perhaps used in the poem as a blend of "gallop" and "triumphant". Used later by Kipling, and cited by Webster as "To move with a clumsy and heavy tread" Gimble: Humpty Dumpty comments that it means: "to make holes like a gimlet." Gyre: "To 'gyre' is to go round and round like a gyroscope." Gyre is entered in the OED from 1420, meaning a circular or spiral motion or form; especially a giant circular oceanic surface current. Carroll also wrote in Mischmasch that it meant to scratch like a dog. The g is pronounced like the /g/ in gold, not like gem (since this was how "gyroscope" was pronounced in Carroll's day).From the preface to Through the Looking-Glass. Jabberwock: When a class in the Girls' Latin School in Boston asked Carroll's permission to name their school magazine The Jabberwock, he replied: "The Anglo-Saxon word 'wocer' or 'wocor' signifies 'offspring' or 'fruit'. Taking 'jabber' in its ordinary acceptation of 'excited and voluble discussion', this would give the meaning of 'the result of much excited and voluble discussion'..."Carroll, Lewis (Author), Tenniel, John (2003). Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, pp. 328–331. Penguin Classics. It is often depicted as a monster similar to a dragon. John Tenniel's illustration depicts it with a long serpentine neck, rabbit-like teeth, spidery talons, bat-like wings and, as a humorous touch, a waistcoat. In the 2010 film version of Alice in Wonderland, it is shown with large back legs, small dinosaur-like front legs, and on the ground it uses its wings as front legs like a pterosaur, and it breathes out lightning flashes rather than flame. Jubjub bird: "A desperate bird that lives in perpetual passion", according to the Butcher in Carroll's later poem The Hunting of the Snark. 'Jub' is an ancient word for a jerkin or a dialect word for the trot of a horse (OED). It might make reference to the call of the bird resembling the sound "jub, jub". Manxome: Possibly 'fearsome'; possibly a portmanteau of "manly" and "buxom", the latter relating to men for most of its history; or "three-legged" after the triskelion emblem of the Manx people from the Isle of Man. Mimsy: Humpty Dumpty comments that Mimsy' is 'flimsy and miserable. Mome: Humpty Dumpty is uncertain about this one: "I think it's short for 'from home', meaning that they'd lost their way, you know". The notes in Mischmasch give a different definition of 'grave' (via 'solemome', 'solemone' and 'solemn'). Outgrabe: Humpty Dumpty says outgribing' is something between bellowing and whistling, with a kind of sneeze in the middle". Carroll's book appendices suggest it is the past tense of the verb to 'outgribe', connected with the old verb to 'grike' or 'shrike', which derived 'shriek' and 'creak' and hence 'squeak'.