ABSTRACT
In this chapter, I suggest that contemporary combinations of high and low forms and properties of humor have compounded with facets of classic nineteenth-century nonsense for children, along with elements of the surreal and the absurd. This development leads to the production of texts, both prose and verse, which suggest evidence of societal and authorial faith in young children’s abilities, not only due to the presence of satire1 but because of the frequent existence of the ‘funny’ and the ‘serious’ at the same time, in the same humorous stimuli (be that a character, description, situation or utterance). This new development within the nonsense genre-which I refer to as ‘new wave nonsense’, following Reynolds (2007)—reveals further acceptance of the ideals of the emergent paradigm; indeed, it is a ‘child centric’ genre, replete with what Hollindale (1997) calls ‘childness’2. However, this contemporary sub-genre of nonsense also refl ects the complexities and paradoxes inherent in contemporary society’s multiple, competing perceptions of childhood as it combines high, cognitive forms of humor, such as satire and irony, with lower humorous properties, such as comically exaggerated characters, violent slapstick, the comic grotesque and scatological humor.
