Sheila Rhodes

June 22, 2006

Genre Presentation-The Limerick

Definition (s):

 Limerick or the genre of Nonsense - A light humorous, nonsensical, or bawdy verse of five anapestic lines usually with the rhyme scheme aabba. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Limerick

Limerick:  A light or humorous poem of five lines. The Merriam Webster Dictionary.

Limerick Example and Definition

A limerick is a five-line poem. The first, second, and fifth lines rhyme and so do the third and fourth. The first, third, and fifth have the same verbal rhythm (meter) and length, and so do the second and fourth.  http://kabubble.com/limerick_example.htm

There once was a man from Peru,                                                 
Who dreamed of eating his shoe,
He awoke with a fright,
In the middle of the night,
And found that his dream had come true!

Laura Black

There was a young lady whose nose
Continually prospers and grows.
When it grew out of sight,
She exclaimed in a fright, 
Oh! Farewell to the end of my nose.

The Little Book of Limericks by Warren Lyfick

Although it is generally believed that Edward Lear devised the limerick, it is nevertheless, a fact that the five-line poem was around long before he made popular his nonsense verse. Some claim that soldiers returning from France to the Irish town of Limerick in the 1700’s invented the Limerick.  http://home.earthlink.net/~kristenaa/index.html.

Early examples

Sections in poems following the limericks form can be found throughout known history, from the work of Greek classic poets to the first known English popular song, Sumer is icumen in (c. 1300) and the works of Shakespeare. Othello, King Lear, The Tempest and Hamlet.  These plays all contain limericks within longer segments. This example is from Othello, Act II Scene III:

IAGO Some wine, ho!

[Sings]

And let me the canakin clink, clink;

And let me the canakin clink

A soldier's a man;

A life's but a span;

Why, then, let a soldier drink.

The first deliberate creation to match limerick form is usually considered Tom O Bedlam c. 1600):  Tom o' Bedlam is the name of a poem written c.1600 about a Bedlamite (Bethlehem Royal Hospital).

From the hag and hungry goblin

That into rags would rend thee

And the spirit that stands

by the naked man,

In the book of the moons defend yee.

Limericks are meant to be funny. They often contain hyperbole, onomatopoeia, idioms, puns, and other figurative devices. The last line of a good limerick contains the 'punch line' or 'heart' of the joke.

Limericks are supposed to be 'fun' rhymes. Enjoy the rhythm as well as the words and as you say the words, clap your hands in time with the rhythm.

Subject Genre: Expressionist Poetry and Fiction

Narrative Genre:  Narrator in Rhyme Scheme; Poetry, Comedy

Representational Genre:  Narration

Sub-genres: Naughty limericks, nice limericks, loony limericks, children’s limericks, games containing missing words of the limerick

 http://home.earthlink.net/~kristenaa/index.html.   If you go to this page there is a lot of good stuff.

Expressionism: Expressionists reject realism and share the impressionist intention to present a personal vision through art.  To render this personal vision artistically, expressionists depict their subjects as they feel or sense or experience them rather that as those subjects appear objectively.  To expose idiosyncratic and often extreme states of human consciousness and emotion, expressionist works tend to oversimplify and distort. (The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms).

 Edward Lear   is the man who was thought to have invented this specific genre.  Most of Lear’s limericks are thought to be phallic. 

The foremost Lear scholar, Vivien Noakes, has pointed out, "When Lear was first writing there was no such thing as an established literary genre of nonsense" (Wanderer 223).  Why, then, should not one but two men writing in the mid-1800s simultaneously yet apparently without knowledge of each other introduce into English letters what amounted to a new genre, one that has never lost its popularity? ¹ The Victorian collective psyche must have been ready, somehow, to respond to the irrational characters and patterns depicted in the Alice (Alice in Wonderland) stories and in Lear's nonsense limericks, songs, and stories. In his book, Art and the Creative Unconscious, the eminent Jungian analyst, Erich Neumann, has noted that "the creative impulse springs from the collective" (98), and that "although creative men usually live unknown to one another, without influence on one another, a common force seems to drive all those men who ever compensate for a cultural canon at a given time or shape a new one" (99). Such is the case with Carroll and Lear.

All drawings for the limericks are by
Lear.

        There was an Old Man with a nose,
        Who said, "If you choose to suppose
            That my nose is too long,
            You are certainly wrong!"
        That remarkable man with a nose.

                                                                                    There was an Old Man with a beard,
                                                                                      who said, "It is just as I feared! --
                                                                                                   Two Owls and a Hen,
                                                                                                  Four Larks and a Wren,
                                                                                    Have all built their nests in his beard

It is here that we tend to see the exposed idiosyncratic and extreme states of human consciousness and emotion, (talked bout in the Bedford Glossary), that Lear, the expressionist, works tend to oversimplify and distort.

Note for teachers:  Have your class to make up their own limericks to see what they can come up with.  This will help students delve into their imaginations and project their own talent, while using their imagination and having fun doing so.  Have students clap their hands in time to their whimsical poetry as it is being recited out loud.  This also shows the student that learning can be fun.   There is no end to the possibilities of the limerick.

Questions for Discussion:

1.      What was Lear really trying to reveal in his genre of nonsense?  Was he just a guy with a good sense of humor?

2.      Can limericks be considered “real poetry”?

3.      As far as poetry is concerned can this be a useful tool in the classroom?