Communications in Humanities Research
- The Open Access Proceedings Series for Conferences
Communications in Humanities Research
Vol. 19, 07 December 2023
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Edward Lear’s Bittersweet Attempt: Being Seen as a Person Alone in a Landscape — The Dong with a Luminous Nose
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Abstract
Edward Lear left a rich and precious poetic legacy from the Victorian Age even though accompanied by illness, loneliness, and melancholy throughout his life. Before nearly one hundred years, scholars have pointed out how Lear’s subject differed from other nonsense verse writers, as well as the autobiographical elements of his poems. But this self-writing in the form of nonsense is never straightforward. It is often confusing whether Lear’s poems are meant to take people to the land of nonsense to wander or explore, hoping that people will feel the same pleasure and spiritual support in nonsense as he does himself, or whether he wants people to see him calling out for cares and hopes, to see his own desires, frustrations and sorrows. Based on The Dong with a Luminous Nose, this article examines and explains how the Dong is a symbol of Lear’s self. Lear projects his suffering from loneliness and unrequited love and his eccentric lifelong sense of exile into this poem; yet at the same time satisfies some of his desires, his quest for the aesthetic of sadness, his own idealism and his deeply hidden histrionic personality. This article fully integrates Lear’s biography, his status as a landscape painter and his creative talents brought about by his illnesses, and draws to the conclusion that this poem is Lear’s bittersweet attempt to be seen as a person alone in a landscape.
Keywords
Edward Lear, nonsense poetry, literature
References
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2. Wilton, A., Lyles, A. (1993). The Great Age of British Watercolours, 1750-1880. Prestel.
3. Olson, K. (1993). Edward Lear: Deleuzian Landscape Painter. Victorian Poetry, 31(4), 347–362. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40002191
4. Chesterton, G. K. (1911). A Defence of Nonsense: And Other Essays. Dodd, Mead.
5. Hark, I. R. (1978). Edward Lear: Eccentricity and Victorian Angst. Victorian Poetry, 16(1/2), 112–122. http://www.jstor.org/stable/40002589
6. Chitty, S. L. (1988). That Singular Person Called Lear: A Biography of Edward Lear, Artist, Traveller, and Prince of Nonsense. Atheneum.
7. Grant, C. (2016). A Smell of Burning: The Story of Epilepsy. Jonathan Cape.
8. Lear, E. (1951). The Complete Nonsense of Edward Lear. Courier Corporation.
9. Auden, W. H. (1967). ‘Edward Lear’. Collected Shorter Poems, 1927-1957. Random House.
10. Akutagawa, R. (2007). Rashomon and Seventeen Other Stories. Penguin Books Limited.
Data Availability
The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study will be available from the authors upon reasonable request.
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- Volume Title
- Proceedings of the 2nd International Conference on Interdisciplinary Humanities and Communication Studies
- ISBN (Print)
- 978-1-83558-181-0
- ISBN (Online)
- 978-1-83558-182-7
- Published Date
- 07 December 2023
- Series
- Communications in Humanities Research
- ISSN (Print)
- 2753-7064
- ISSN (Online)
- 2753-7072
- DOI
- 10.54254/2753-7064/19/20231218
- Copyright
- 07 December 2023
- Open Access
- This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited