ABSTRACT
Edward Lear's nonsense reveals a recurrent interest in matters of consumption: over a third of the poems, stories and songs contained within A Book of Nonsense. While recognizing the importance of phonesis and linguistic innovation to Lear's verse, the author argues that, the nonsense books are in fact closely attuned to Victorian cultures of eating and drinking, for, although replete with ambiguity, irrationality and alogism, the world of nonsense that Lear creates is never entirely separate from the world of sense to which it ostensibly stands opposed. In the nonsense books, gastronomic freedom and the right to express one's personal tastes are evidently paramount to the realization of psychical satisfaction and individual contentment. The author cites a limerick involving the Old Person of Putney: There was an Old Person of Putney, Whose food was roast spiders and chutney, Which he took with his tea, within sight of the sea, That romantic Old Person of Putney.
