ABSTRACT
The nonsense of cautionary verses is anchored in the contradictory norms of absurdity established in nursery rhymes. Likewise, it is easy to see nursery rhymes, with their frequently menacing tone, as prototypical cautionary tales, sometimes close to fable; though often the menace and absurdity are so entwined that it is difficult to see how the caution is to be read. This is certainly true of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Jabberwocky’ and Hilaire Belloc’s cautionary verses, the main texts with which we deal in this chapter. The interest here, as in nonsense poetry more generally, is in understanding the method in the madness. Based on the similar vicariousness of children’s literature and animal-concerned poetry, this chapter examines how ambivalences arise from a history of writing children/animal interactions as proxies for human relationships. Cautionary verses are a genre typically written for children, based on three dynamics of equal importance – firstly, didacticism in the form of lessons taught by animal characters; secondly, power relations; and, finally, play within texts.
