ABSTRACT
D. H. Lawrence's introductory essay to Harry Crosby's Chariot of the Sun. However, Lawrence reports what 'they' say only to suggest that 'they' are mistaken: the 'stringing together of words into a ripple and jingle and run of colours' is 'something very like poetry, something for which we might borrow the old romantic name of poesy'. Bill Brown begins his 2001 essay 'Thing Theory' suggesting 'things' in their materiality unmediated by the sign should constitute 'some stable alternative to the instabilities and uncertainties, the ambiguities and anxieties, forever fetishised by theory'. Merleau-Ponty's theory of language, however, is also key to a consideration of the relationship language has with this 'scene of phenomenological attention' the things have interrupted and turned to bric-a-brac. Edward Lear's nonsense continually questions the relationship one have with objects; moreover, the lines between objects and people become increasingly blurred the more we become immersed in his story worlds.
