"Jabberwocky" is a nonsense poem written by 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.[1]
"Jabberwocky" is considered one of the greatest nonsense poems written in English.[2][3] Its playful, whimsical language has given English nonsense words and neologisms such as "galumphing" and "chortle".
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
AAW64was invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Gardner, Martin (1999). The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Edition. New York, NY: W. W. Norton and Company.
Few would dispute that Jabberwocky is the greatest of all nonsense poems in English.
- ^ Rundus, Raymond J. (October 1967). ""O Frabjous Day!": Introducing Poetry". The English Journal. 56 (7). National Council of Teachers of English: 958–963. doi:10.2307/812632. JSTOR 812632.